SÃO PAULO – In a just-released book, former Brazilan police official Cláudio Guerra says he helped to kill at least 12 members of opposition groups during the country’s military dictatorship (1965-1985). He admits having incinerated 10 corpses of people who had disappeared for political reasons.
Guerra, 71, decided to confess his crimes after becoming an evangelical pastor. He also told authors Marcelo Netto and Rogério Medeiros his intentions to appear before the Truth Commission, which has recently been created to investigate human rights abuses, particularly those committed during military rule.
According to the former officer, the 10 corpses were burned in a sugar-cane power plant in Rio de Janeiro. The plant belonged to the family of former governor Heli Ribeiro Gomes. “I was in charge of bringing them there. Everybody had been killed by methods of torture,” he writes in the book – “Memórias de uma Guerra Suja” (Memories of a Dirty War), published by Topbooks.
All the victims were members of opposition political groups, mostly from the political left. Their families had never received news on their whereabouts.
Maria Cecília Ribeiro Gomes, 55, daughter of former governor Gomes, was surprised to hear Guerra’s confessions. “I’m astonished. This is nonsense, he must be crazy,” she said. “There were over 3,000 employees working at the power plant. How could anybody take corpses there, do such a thing, and nobody would know?”
Blood on own hands
Guerra says he personally murdered some of the victims. The book also mentions three clandestine cemeteries in the cities of São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Petrópolis, all of them in southeastern Brazil.
The former officer admits having joined terrorist attacks to delay the democratization of Brazil, including an infamous, but failed 1981 attack on the Riocentro pavilion when military officers tried in vain to set off bombs at a Labor Day concert.
The book makes a connection between the authors of the terrorist attacks and the 1982 murder of journalist Alexandre Von Baumgarten, who had written about the traffic of uranium from Brazil to the Middle East.
Guerra was a member of Dops (Department of Social and Political Order), which repressed those who were opposed to the military rule. The former officer was kept under arrest for seven years accused of murdering a man involved in illegal gambling, which he denies. He is also suspected of joining so-called “extermination groups’ that were hired to kill people in Brazilian slums.
The president of “Tortura Nunca Mais no Rio” (Torture, Never Again in Rio), Vitória Garbois, says she was “perplexed” when she heard of the book. “His name has never been on the lists of those accused of violent repression.”
Brazil’s Minister of Human Rights Maria do Rosario says the Truth Commission will investigate Guerra’s account.
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Photo – André Solnik