A self-confessed former death squad agent will soon release his memoirs with revelations about his role in the execution of leftist militants during Brazil’s military dictatorship, publishers said on Thursday.
Claudio Guerra, a former operative of Brazil’s notorious secret police agency DOPS, related his experiences to journalists Rogerio Medeiros and Marcelo Netto for Memories of a Dirty War, expected on Rio bookshelves today.
“At a particular moment of the war against enemies of the regime, we discussed what to do with the bodies of those who had been eliminated. This was at the end of 1973,” he said in the memoir, excerpts of which were published on the IG news Web site.
Guerra, 71, recounted that 10 leftist militants — including then-Communist Party leaders Luiz Ignacio Maranhao Filho and Joao Massena Mello — were incinerated in the furnace of a sugar factory owned by Rio State’s deputy governor at the time.
The former operative disclosed that he personally took part in the failed bomb attack on the Riocentro Pavilion during a 1981 Workers’ Day concert in Rio and named the two counter-insurgency officers who led the operation.
The attack, conducted covertly by DOPS agents who intended to blame it on leftist insurgents, went wrong when one of the bombs exploded on the lap of a military agent.
Guerra also contradicted the official version of the death of former DOPS director Sergio Paranhos Fleury.
Fleury, famous for his cruel torture methods, officially died on his boat in 1979, but Guerra said top military brass ordered his killing, because he was no longer obeying orders.
The one-time secret police chief was responsible for the 1969 ambush killing in Sao Paulo of Carlos Marighella, the Marxist revolutionary and writer who authored the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla.
“This man relates atrocities that traumatized families of the missing. The government must intervene and call on him to testify to know if he is telling the truth,” said Victoria Grabois, head of rights group Torture Never Again.
Publisher Topbooks said Guerra’s name does not appear on any lists established by leftist groups because he never used torture. “His mission was to kill,” it added.
The daily O Globo newspaper said Guerra was implicated in dozens of murders, such as the bomb attack against a gambling syndicate operative and the presumed murder of his wife and sister-in-law in 1980.
He repented while in detention and became an evangelical pastor.
Unlike other South American countries ruled by right-wing dictatorships that committed political abuses and killings from the 1960s to 1980s — Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile — Brazil has never put the perpetrators on trial.
A 1979 amnesty law, upheld by the Brazilian Supreme Court in 2010, paved the way for the return of political exiles, but also protected the perpetrators of -dictatorship-era crimes.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla jailed and tortured during the 1964 to 1985 dictatorship, has endorsed the creation of a truth panel to probe rights
Brazil officially recognizes 400 dead and missing during the military dictatorship, compared with 30,000 in Argentina and more than 3,200 in Chile.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS