SAO PAULO (AP) — The Brazilian government has started searching a cemetery for the remains of political dissidents who disappeared during Brazil’s former military dictatorship.
The Human Rights Office of the Brazilian presidency said in an e-mailed statement that about 10 dissidents who disappeared during the military’s rule 1964 to 1985 could be buried in Sao Paulo’s Vila Formosa cemetery. More than 450 people were killed or disappeared during that period.
The search began when authorities learned that several dissidents who disappeared after being arrested had been buried clandestinely in the cemetery.
Among those believed to be buried there is Virgilio Gomes da Silva, who was killed after being arrested for leading the 1969 kidnapping of former U.S. Ambassador Charles Elbrick. Elbrick was released unharmed in exchange for 15 political prisoners.
Silva’s family found documents showing that he was initially buried at Vila Formosa in 1969. Authorities believe his remains were moved to another unidentified location within the cemetery during the 1970s in an attempt to hide where dissidents were buried.
Experts using ground-penetrating radar and photographs from 1972 located what they believe could be the remains of Silva and others beneath a planter. The finding will have to be confirmed with a dig scheduled for the last week of November.
Meanwhile, Brazilian prosecutors are pursuing a civil lawsuit seeking damages against three ex-soldiers and a former military policeman accused of the murder, torture and kidnapping of guerrillas who resisted the dictatorship.
Among those named in the suit are retired Army Maj. Innocencio Fabricio de Mattos Beltrao, accused of ordering Silva’s death by torture, and former army Capt. Mauricio Lopes Lima, who prosecutors hold responsible for the torture of President-elect Dilma Rousseff when she was a guerrilla. It isn’t clear if the accused have legal representation.
Rousseff joined the resistance in 1967 as a 19-year-old. She was captured in 1970, then held and tortured for three years.
The accusations are based on public records, victims’ testimony, and testimony from military trials during the dictatorship.
Prosecutors argue that a 1979 amnesty law that pardoned civilians and military personnel for crimes between 1964 and 1985 does not prevent charges under civil law.
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