Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, Mar 5 (EFE).– Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff visited her political mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, at his apartment in this southeastern city a day after he was detained for questioning as part of the probe into a massive corruption scheme centered on state-controlled oil company Petrobras.

The head of state arrived early Saturday afternoon at Lula’s home in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a suburb of Sao Paulo, where some 300 people had gathered to show their support for the charismatic former president and co-founder of the Workers’ Party, or PT.

The crowd also showed its backing for Rousseff, chanting “No coup” in reference to the opposition’s attempt to impeach her for allegedly massaging budget figures to disguise the size of the deficit.

Although she did not meet with people on the street, Rousseff, Lula and the ex-president’s wife, Marisa Leticia, later greeted the crowd from the balcony of the apartment.

Rousseff raised her left fist to the crowd, while the supporters chanted “Lula, warrior of the Brazilian people” and waved red flags and shirts (the color of the center-left PT).

Minutes earlier, Lula had greeted and mingled with his supporters, many of whom had camped out overnight to show their solidarity with the popular politician, at the entrance to the apartment building.

Federal Police raided Lula’s home in Sao Bernardo do Campo early Friday and then brought him in for three hours of questioning at a police station located at Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo.

The ex-president, who governed Brazil from 2003 through the end of 2010, said afterward that he had felt like a “prisoner” and called his detention an “insult.”

Prosecutors, for their part, said that the body of evidence against Lula was “quite significant” and that Lula’s foundation had received nearly 20 million reais (some $5 million) in donations from the five engineering and construction companies most closely tied to the bribes-for-inflated contracts scandal centered on Petrobras.

The main focus of the Petrobras investigation has been on an alleged cartel of companies that purportedly overcharged the oil giant for contracts, splitting the extra money with corrupt Petrobras officials while setting aside some of the loot to pay off politicians who provided cover for the graft.

Lula was detained for questioning a day after Brazil’s Supreme Court voted unanimously to allow prosecution of lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha for his alleged involvement in the Petrobras scandal.

Numerous convictions have already been handed down in the $2 billion corruption scandal, with senior construction company officials among those sentenced to prison or house arrest.

Rousseff, a former Petrobras chair who succeeded Lula as president in 2011, has not been implicated in the scandal. EFE