Brazilian secret police head guilty of torture

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Friday, 10.10.08
Brazilian secret police head guilty of torture
Associated Press

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- A Brazilian court says the former head of Sao Paulo's secret police was responsible for torturing three people during the country's military dictatorship in the 1970s, apparently the first time a former high-ranking officer has been found guilty of crimes in the military regime.

A Sao Paulo state court said former Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra tortured the three Brazilians when he headed the Sao Paulo secret police from 1970-74.

Local news media report that Thursday's verdict is the first of its kind in Brazil. The media say the verdict represents only a recognition of guilt, however. Ustra is protected by a sweeping 1979 amnesty that exempts both leftist guerrillas and the military from prosecution for any political crimes committed during the regime.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/721079.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Multinationals Implicated in Deaths by Brazil's Dictatorship

Multinationals Implicated in Deaths by Brazil's Dictatorship

Brazzil Magazine, News Report, Bill Van Auken, Posted: May 26, 2005

Major U.S. and European corporations collaborated intimately with Latin American military dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s, fingering militant workers for arrest, torture and often death, according to an article that appeared this week in the Brazilian daily O Globo.

Based on newly released secret police documents as well as the work of Brazilian historians, the article, written by Brazilian journalist José Casado, establishes that auto companies, including General Motors, Chrysler and Volkswagen, the Firestone tire company and other corporations routinely handed over lists of suspected union activists to the secret police and clandestine death squads.

This state-corporate repression was so effective in Brazil that none of the major companies registered a single strike in nine years – 1969 to 1978.

The resulting suppression of wages and benefits constituted the political foundation for the so-called "Brazilian miracle" of high profits and growth rates that came to an end with the onset of the debt crisis at the end of the 1970s.

The military came to power in Brazil through a 1964 coup orchestrated with the support of Washington and the CIA. By 1969, the regime had turned to intense repression, suspending habeas corpus and dragging thousands of people from their homes, workplaces and schools to be thrown into prison, tortured and summarily executed.

Foreign corporations supported this repression, the article states, by funding "Operation Bandeirantes," a paramilitary secret police operation formed within the army.

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