Torture in Brazil

[4] 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.

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.

[4] 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.

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.

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.

[28] For her master's thesis, Maria Gorete Marques, a sociologist at the Center for the Study of Violence at the University of São Paulo (USP), followed 181 state agents who were being prosecuted for torture and concluded that 70% of them were not punished.

[28] According to Judge Luciano Losekann of the Prison System Monitoring, "It generally occurs in closed environments, away from the eyes of witnesses or with the fearful complicity of public officials."

[28] According to a survey conducted in 2010 by Professor Nancy Cardia, from the Nucleus for the Study of Violence at USP, 52.5% of the population agreed that a court could accept evidence obtained through torture.