Vice President About Notorious Brazilian Torturer: ‘Ustra Was an Honorable Man’

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Vice-President Hamilton Mourão said in an interview with the German newspaper ‘Deutsche Welle’ that Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, convicted of torture in the military dictatorship, was a man of “honor,” “who respected the human rights of his subordinates.”

The former military officer, who died in 2015 at the age of 83, is pointed out by dozens of persecuted politicians and relatives of victims of the military regime as being responsible for the persecution, torture, and death of opponents to the 1964 coup.

“What I can say about the man Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, he was my commander in the late 1970s, and he was a man of honor and a man who respected the human rights of his subordinates. So, much of what people say about him, I can tell you, because I had a very close friendship with this man, is not true,” he said.

Mourão said that torture is not a practice that the Brazilian government agrees with or “welcomes”, but commented that many people who fought against urban guerrillas in the 60s and 70s were “unfairly accused of being torturers”.

“First of all, I’m not in favor of torture, and, of course, many people are still alive from that time, and they all want to put it the way they saw it. That’s why I said before that we have to wait for all these players to disappear for history to do its part. And, of course, what truly happened during this period…this period has passed,” he said.

Mourão said that during the dictatorship, the military “did very good things for Brazil and other things were not so good” and said that “history can only be judged over time”.

“We are still about 50 years away from that time. We need another 50 years for this period to be well evaluated,” he added.

The Vice-President also stated that democracy is one of the permanent national goals and that the government wants to make Brazil “the most brilliant democracy in the Southern Hemisphere”.

Asked whether President Jair Bolsonaro’s position after the Supreme Court (STF) authorized a Federal Police operation against the President’s allies in the fake news inquiry, in which Bolsonaro said the Armed Forces “do not follow absurd orders,” Mourão said it had not been a threat.

“The Armed Forces are in tune with their constitutional mission and are not abandoning it. Things are quiet and going well here in Brazil. And I make it very clear that democracy is a value not only to the Bolsonaro government but also to our Armed Forces. So there is no threat to the Supreme Court or the legislative system here in Brazil,” he said.

The Vice-President also said that Bolsonaro’s involvement in rallies calling for the closure of Congress and the Supreme Court was not a threat to democracy either. And he said that São Paulo Governor João Doria’s statement, who saw “gratuitous attacks on democracy” at the time, was caused by a “polarization in politics”.

“No, this happens because there is polarization in politics. The São Paulo government opposed Bolsonaro. This is much more talk than, say, action,” he commented.

Asked if this was a dangerous conversation, the Vice-President said it was not, given that “no one has the power to do whatever they want here in Brazil”.

“No, it’s not dangerous. It’s dangerous when you have the power to do whatever you want, but no one has the power to do whatever they want here in Brazil,” he said.

Convicted of torture

Ustra was known in the dictatorship’s infamous basement chambers as “Dr. Tibiriçá” and was the only Brazilian military officer ever declared a torturer by the Courts.

The Dictatorship Dossier by the Special Committee of Killed and Political Missing links the colonel to 60 cases of deaths and disappearances in São Paulo. The São Paulo Archdiocese, through the ‘Brasil Nunca Mais’ project, denounced over 500 cases of torture committed inside the Doi-Codi facilities during the period when Ustra was commander, between 1970 and 1974.

In 2015, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) filed a complaint against Ustra. He was accused of the death of communist militant Carlos Nicolau Danielli, who was kidnapped and tortured at the Operations and Intelligence Division (DOI) in São Paulo in December 1972.

Source: O Globo

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