Brazil former prisoner recounts how she met Colonel Ustra, honored by Bolsonaro

Amelinha Teles, former activist of Brazil's Communist Party and one of the victims of the Brazilian military dictatorship, recounted Monday her encounter with Army Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, known simply as “Colonel Ustra,” the first military man officially recognized by the country's court authorities as a torturer in the period of military rule.

“I was beat up by him still in the yard [at the police station]. He knocked me to the floor with a smack while he shouted 'terrorist.' He called the other torture agents and told them to grab me and drag me to a torture room.”

On the Viva Maria, a radio program broadcast by the Rádio Nacional da Amazônia, she gave hearers a description of the man mentioned Sunday (Apr. 17) by Deputy Jair Bolsonaro in his vote in favor of President Dilma Rousseff's ouster in the lower house.

“He took my children to a room, where I was to be found sitting on the dragon chair [a contraption for giving prisoners electric shocks] naked, with vomit and piss all over my body. What is that? My children were five and four years old. That was the worst part of the torture I experienced,” the former activist said.

Ustra was commander at the Department of Information Operations, known as DOI-CODI, in São Paulo, from 1970 to 1974. In May 2013, he attended a sitting of the National Truth Commission, during which he answered a few questions and denied he had committed any crime while leading the unit. Ustra died of cancer in 2015, in Brasília.

Today, Amelinha is a member of a commission dedicated to the relatives of those who disappeared or were killed during the military regime. She is also an adviser in the São Paulo Truth Commission. In her view, the tribute paid by Bolsonaro to the torturer evokes one of the saddest pages in the history of Brazil. This “means that the deputy wants the Brazilian government to continue torturing and exterminating people who think differently from the way he does. What kind of democracy wants the torture and repression of people who don't agree with his ideas?” Amelinha Teles said.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira