BRASILIA, (Reuters) – A Brazilian judge yesterday dismissed the first charges ever brought against an army officer over crimes committed during the country’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, dealing a blow to rights groups and victims’ families.
Prosecutors brought charges this week against Colonel Sebastiao Curio Rodrigues de Moura, 77, who commanded troops they say kidnapped and tortured five members of the Araguaia guerrilla movement in the Amazon that was fighting to impose communism.
Human rights groups had applauded the charges as a “landmark step for accountability in Brazil,” which critics say has taken only timid steps to deal with that dark chapter in its history. The fate of the five and several hundred others has never been discovered.
Prosecutors argued the kidnapping of the five was not covered by a 1979 amnesty law because they were not found and the case never closed. The prosecution argument heeded a 2010 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that Brazil must investigate those kidnappings and punish the perpetrators.
In dismissing the charges, Federal Judge Joao Cesar Matos argued they were covered by the amnesty law.
“Pretending that you can skirt around the amnesty law to reopen the debate over military dictatorship-era crimes … disregards the historical circumstances which, in a great effort of national reconciliation, led to its implementation,” the judge said in a statement on the Federal Justice website of Para state
