The Federal Public Ministry (MPF) in São Paulo filed a action in Federal Court calling for the accountability of 46 former agents of the military dictatorship for direct or indirect involvement in the torture, deaths and disappearances of 15 opponents of the regime. According to the agency, all were linked to repressive units such as the Information Operations Detachment – Internal Defense Operations Center (DOI-Codi), the Department of Political and Social Order (Dops) and the Legal Medical Institute (IML) in São Paulo.
The action is in the civil sphere and requests, among other things, that these former agents or their families [no caso de eles já terem falecido] make compensation to the Brazilian State, since the country needed to compensate the victims of the dictatorship. The declaration of responsibility would constitute legal recognition that the defendants were part of the acts of kidnapping, torture, murder, forced disappearance and concealment of the true circumstances of the death of these 15 opponents of the dictatorship.
Among the defendants are former DOPS delegate Sérgio Paranhos Fleury, who died in 1979, and former DOI-Codi commander Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who died in 2015, two of the most prominent extermination agents of the period. The list also includes 14 former members of the Forensic Medical Institute, who were responsible for preparing reports that omitted signs of torture on the bodies of political activists who were murdered during the dictatorship.
According to the MPF, the action seeks to comply with the recommendations of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) and the National Truth Commission (CNV) so that the Brazilian State promotes measures of reparation, preservation of memory and elucidation of the truth about events that occurred during the dictatorship.
This is the second public civil action filed by the MPF this year. In March, the MPF had already requested that 42 former agents involved in the repression of another 19 militants be held accountable.
For the Federal Public Ministry, the acts of torture committed during the military dictatorship are crimes against humanity and, therefore, could not be covered by the Amnesty Law, which was decreed in 1979 and granted amnesty to all political crimes committed during the dictatorship, extending the benefit not only to the victims of repression, but also to the torturers.
In addition to requesting that these former agents be held civilly liable, the MPF also requires that the Union and the state of São Paulo be required to implement a series of reparation and historical preservation measures, in addition to clarifying the rights violations that were committed between 1964 and 1985, the period during which the country was under military dictatorship. The proposal is that both governments be required to create online and physical memorial spaces for the period and that educational modules on gender equality be provided to members of the Armed Forces and public security agencies.
This Friday (30), the Minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, Silvio Almeidaresumed the work of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances of the Dictatorship. The work had been interrupted in 2022, during the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro. According to the minister, in addition to delivering justice, the work of the commission combats false narratives about Brazil’s past.
