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The Federal Supreme Court is unwilling to include in this year’s agenda the lawsuit questioning the Amnesty Law, which exempted from punishment the agents accused of torturing and killing about 70 people in the so-called Araguaia Guerrilla, during the last military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985).
Behind the scenes, there is an understanding that an election year is an inappropriate time to analyze controversial issues, which may cause new sticking points between the Judiciary branch and the federal government.
President Jair Bolsonaro is an enthusiast of the military regime. At the end of March, in a ceremony at the presidential palace, he praised the 1964 coup. Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (Liberal Party, PL, of São Paulo), his son, debauched the torture suffered by journalist Miriam Leitão in 1972.
Ms. Leitão, a columnist at the newspaper O Globo, released this Sunday audios of sessions of the Superior Military Court (STM) that prove the practice of torture during the dictatorship. The recordings cite, for example, the case of a pregnant woman who suffered electric shocks to her genitals.
On Monday, Vice President Hamilton Mourão, said that the reports are part of history and should remain in the past. When asked about a possible investigation, he ironically said: “Are you going to bring the guys back from the grave?”
At the Supreme Court, an appeal filed by the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) against the plenary’s decision that, in 2010, considered legitimate the pardon granted to agents accused of torture during the regime, has been on hold for more than a decade.
At the time, by seven votes against two, the court understood that it was not the Judiciary branch’s place to review a political agreement made during the transition from military dictatorship to democracy, at the end of the 1970s.
OAB’s Federal Council appealed in 2011, but to date the court has not returned to the matter. The delay drew the attention of the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGR), which since 2019 has been waiting for a response to a request made to the Supreme Court to prioritize the case.
In practice, the result of the trial will define whether the Amnesty Law, validated by the Federal Supreme Court, should prevail or the condemnation imposed on Brazil also in 2010 by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), to punish those responsible for the violations.
Raquel Dodge, the then Prosecutor-General of the Republic, warned the Supreme Court about court decisions that, based on Brazilian law, have cleared torturers from answering for their acts – which is contrary to the IACHR’s ruling.
“These decisions demonstrate that jurisdictional bodies of the Brazilian state have imposed concrete obstacles to the criminal prosecution launched against civilian and military agents involved in serious human rights violations committed during the military regime.”
In the records, there are no manifestations of Ms. Dodge’s successor in office, Augusto Aras. The last change in the lawsuit is from December, when the rapporteur, Justice Dias Toffoli, denied the participation of the Brazilian Press Association (ABI) as an interested party in the case.
Justice Toffoli says that the request cannot be admitted because it was presented after the judgment on merits. He emphasized that the current phase, that of the appeals, “does not allow for rediscussing of the cause, much less imply the reopening of the investigation.”
Source: Valor International