Ask Lemmy

I don't remember the charges he did time for other than them vaguely being about 'corruption'.

That's because they were bogus charges, they were only meant to remove him from the election. In short he was accused of money laundering and corruption, because they claimed that he received bribes through renovations on an apartment (that he didn't owned nor lived in), and in short he was arrested before being judged, he served a couple of years in jail having been denied his abeas corpus while the prosecutor charging him gave speeches saying things like "we might not have proof, but we have convictions". Eventually the judge that prosecuted Lula was given a position as the ministry of security in the government he help elect by taking Lula from the election, and a panel of supreme judges ruled he had had no actual evidence to convict Lula and overthrew the conviction.

He had close ties with Christina Kirchner, which is well known to have had people killed for investigating her,

Yeah, that's one of the other ones I know enough to say they're very well put on that list.

and i remember something about him and her wanting to make some kind of latin american alliance thing which I consider a terrifying idea.

It's called Mercosur, it's a very good idea that predates both Lula and Kirchner, it was formally declared in 85 by Sarney and Alfonsín. Lula has been a very strong advocate for a more united Mercosur, wanting it to be similar to the EU, this has nothing to do with left or right wing, Paraguay is a member and Lula has kept good relationships with Peña despite him being right wing, at the same time the Mercosur suspended Venezuela after the election fraud and Lula has criticized Maduro because of his authoritarian regime.

There were also stuff about political persecution of the bolsonaro nutjob proteters but I'll take that with a big pinch of salt.

Yeah, they're calling political persecution to the fact that violent radical protestors enticed by social media who invaded the house of government and destroyed property in an attempt to overthrow the results of an election were given the option to go through an education course and abstain from social media or serve prison sentences, and they chose prison sentences, so now they're in jail (surprised Pikachu face). Some documents also showed that it was part of a plan from Bolsonaro to create confusion while Lula was assassinated, and his answer to that was "it doesn't matter that we planned it and had it all scheduled, the assassin didn't actually do it so we can't be judged for planning something that didn't happened"