Torture in Brazil

During the so-called years of lead, as well as during the Vargas dictatorship (the period called Estado Novo), there was the systematic practice of torture against political prisoners – those considered subversive and who allegedly threatened national security.

During the military dictatorship (1964–1985)

During the military regime of 1964, the Brazilian torturers were mostly military personnel from the armed forces, especially the army. The main centers of torture in Brazil at this time were the Destacamentos de Operações de Informação – Centros de Operações de Defesa Interna (DOI/CODI), military organs of internal defense. In 2006, Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, a colonel in the Brazilian Army and former head of the São Paulo DOI/CODI, answered for the crime of torture in a military court.

But there were also civilian torturers, who acted under orders from the military. One of the most famous and cruel torturers was Sérgio Paranhos Fleury, a delegate of the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) in São Paulo, who used brutal – and sometimes lethal – methods to obtain confessions from his suspects, in spite of his bosses. According the report from "Brasil: Nunca Mais", at least 1,918 political prisoners have testified to having been tortured between 1964 and 1979 (March 15, 1979 was the cut-off date for the period under investigation). The document describes 283 different forms of torture used at the time by the security agencies.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the military dictatorships in Brazil and other South American countries created the so-called Operation Condor to persecute, torture and eliminate opponents. They received support from North American military experts connected to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who taught new torture techniques to obtain information. The School of the Americas, installed in the United States, was identified by historians and witnesses as a center for the dissemination of torture techniques. According to Cuban intelligence agent Manuel Cosculluela, American former police officer Dan Mitrione was one of the American envoys who, posing as an agent of the US Embassy in Brasilia, trained Brazilian police officers in "scientific" torture techniques to obtain information from arrested suspects; Cosculluela said he used beggars to demonstrate his techniques. Mitrione's story in Brazil was the subject of Costa-Gavras' film State of Siege.

With the re-democratization, in 1985, the practice of torture for political purposes ceased. But the techniques were incorporated by many police officers, who began to apply them against common prisoners, suspects or detainees, especially when they were black and poor, or, in rural areas, indigenous people. Among the main torture techniques applied in the period, we can mentionː the drowning, the Dragon Chair (a kind of electric chair), beatings, truth serum (injectable drug that leaves the victim in a state of drowsiness), the refrigerator (small box in which the victim was confined and suffered with extreme temperature fluctuations and disturbing noises) and pau de arara.

Training in torture techniques

The torture techniques used in Brazil, contrary to the idea that they would be improvisations of those who apply torture, actually have a close connection with techniques developed through experiments such as those of Project MKUltra. Techniques brought to Brazil and Latin America, through American training and trainers, are contained in the KUBARK Manuals used for training Brazilian military and security agents at the School of the Americas as well as in other exchange programs.

Several military and security agents from Brazil received training at the School of the Americas, whose name was changed to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Several members of the Brazilian police force were trained by torture experts who came to Brazil in order to spread the methods and means of interrogation compiled by the CIA.

Such was the case with the well-known Dan Mitrione. In the mid-1960s, Mitrione was hired by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to train the police in Brazil and Uruguay, teaching torture methods that spread further human rights violations and police brutality in Brazil and Uruguay. Some documents released by the US government about Mitrione's activities in South America are archived by The National Security Archive project.

The recent release by the US government of a partial list of names of participants in the School of the Americas training sessions has also revealed the fact that Brazilian military personnel have trained and participated in torture, including in Chile. The School of the Americas Watch organization, since 1983, has been researching information on countries sending personnel for training at the School of the Americas and publishing names of trainees, campaigning for the closure of the so-called "School of Assassins," now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.