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SAO BERNARDO DO CAMPO, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva turned himself in to police on Saturday, leaving the steel workers union offices where he had sought refuge while defying a court deadline to submit to custody.

Lula was surrounded by hundreds of diehard supporters, including leaders of his Workers Party, union workers and activists, in the industrial suburb of Sao Paulo where his political career began as a union official. He will be taken by police to a jail cell in the southern city of Curitiba, where he will begin serving his 12-year sentence.