At issue is the alleged house arrest and detention of Zola Bambi, on January 5th, when he was prevented, in the morning, from leaving home to defend an activist who would be subjected to a summary trial, followed by police officers and criminal investigation took the lawyer to a police station, where he was held for hours.
According to Zola Bambi, the matter was widely publicized and came to the attention of experts, who heard him in April this year and wrote to the Government requesting clarification.
Zola Bambi, who spoke at a press conference this Tuesday, said that, since the incident, he had never been heard by the country's authorities until he received a phone call last week from the Attorney General's Office asking what had happened and if there is already a process taking place.
In a letter, the experts as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression and Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers asked the Government for a response within 60 days.
In June, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights reported that the message about the lawyer's impediment from attending his client's pre-trial hearing "is completely incorrect, as it seeks to give the impression that he was a 'victim' of an atypical police action and totally intimidating, facts that have no legal or factual basis".
According to the government, the authorities' action was based on a criminal case against Zola Bambi, which is in the preparatory phase, highlighting that after "three unjustified absences" to respond to interrogation, the security forces were requested.
The Government also argued that Zola Bambi "wrongly interpreted the presence of the police at his home as a form of persecution, abuse of authority or impediment to his professional activity as a lawyer, since the National Police did not know that a hearing was scheduled at that day".
The lawyer denies that there is a case being processed against him.
