Venezuelan prosecutor accuses Lula of faking injury as tensions with Brazil rise

A top Venezuelan official on Saturday accused Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of faking an accident to avoid attending a summit meeting at which Brasilia vetoed Caracas's entry into the BRICS organization.

"Direct sources close to Brazil inform me that President Lula da Silva staged a supposed accident to use it as an alibi to not attend the BRICS summit and that it was a deception to perpetrate the veto against Venezuela," Attorney General Tarek William Saab said in a statement on social media.

Venezuela had been counting on being admitted to the BRICS group during its recent summit in the Russian city of Kazan.

BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the original members of the loose geopolitical grouping which has since expanded to include several full and partner countries.

An official Brazilian source had said that Lula canceled his trip to Kazan on doctors' advice after injuring his head in an accident at home. Three days later, he was declared fit to return to work.

Officials from Brazil's Foreign Ministry represented the country in Kazan.

Saab said that rumors about a staged accident "seem unfortunately to be corroborated by a video in which one sees President Lula in good health... smiling and unscathed."

Saab added, "An investigation should be opened."

Caracas reacted furiously to the Brazilian veto, saying in a statement that it represented  a "hostile" and "immoral" act.

Notably, however, it attacked the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, not Lula himself.

An advisor to Lula, former foreign minister Celso Amorim, attributed the veto to a "breach of confidence" by Venezuela.

He said Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro had promised Lula he would publish detailed results from the July 28 election but had yet to do so.

The Venezuelan opposition has said those results would show that Maduro was handily defeated by Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who fled to Spain in September after a warrant was issued for his arrest on what the opposition calls trumped-up charges.

ba-pgf/ial/bbk/md