The taint of torture and the brazilian legal system

Abstract

In Brazil, the practice of torture intertwines deeply with its own history. The literature on the subject has had a greater intensification on its registers during the Dictatorial Regime (1964 to 1985). In spite of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, Brazil only makes efforts to investigate the crimes of torture of this period to comply with the provisions of the United Nations in 2011. Within this scenario, the NationalTruth Commission (Law 12.528, of November 2011) was created with the purpose of clarifying the facts and circumstances of cases concerning human rights violations, as well as the Law on Access to Information (Law 12.527 of November 2011), which have regulated the constitutional right to access public information, valid for all areas of the public administration. These laws allowed the opening of the archives of the dictatorship until denied on the basis of a severely restricted access. In this context, was created the Network Studies and Research on Violence-RIEV in partnership with Federal University of Paraíba-UFPB and Federal University of Santa Catarina-UFSC with the objective of investigating violations of human rights during the dictatorship, such as torture, persecution and violations of the right-to-live. The study of these violations is of fundamental importance for the historical unveiling of this period, especially because they were perpetrated by agents of the State. This article aims to present part of the research undertaken to understand the official legal procedures to prevent the practice of acts of torture in the national territory and how they are understood in the Brazilian legal system, with special attention to Law 9.455, of April 7, 1997 that criminalizes torture.