“General Belham – At the time he headed the DOI-Codi, he was on the DOI-Codi premises when Mr. Rubens Paiva arrived. He knows who interrogated the prisoner and what happened!
Hughes – Reserve officer, DOI-Codi interrogator, cited as ‘strong, blue-eyed’, where after being licensed by the Army, he went to the Post and Telegraph Office […].
Colonel Ronaldo – Raymundo Ronaldo Campos, a cavalry officer, participated in the interrogations.
Rubens Paim Sampaio, head of the Ciex team, the team that received Mr. Rubens Paiva and interrogated him.”
Ask them, they might clarify what happened.
The statements were made by Colonel Ronald Leão, in a letter to the CNV (National Truth Commission), which investigated, from 2012 to 2014, human rights violations during (1964-1985).
The case covered is that of former deputy Rubens Beyrodt Paiva, kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1971 by the regime. More than 50 years later, his body has never been found. The soldiers who murdered him were not punished.
The topic was discussed again with the box office success of “”, a film by Walter Salles that seeks 2025.
Paiva was a federal deputy until the coup of 1º April 1964. Hours after giving a speech on Rádio Nacional against what was happening, he was revoked. He went into exile in Europe for a few months and then returned to Brazil, where he lived with his wife, Eunice, and their five children.
His generous personality led him to help exiles communicate with Brazil, even though he was already away from politics and without direct participation in the armed struggle, says Jason Tércio, writer and biographer of the politician.
His case appears in the CNV’s final report as emblematic, along with that of him also being tortured and killed.
Completed in 2014, the commission found that Rubens was taken from his home on January 20, 1971 by agents armed with machine guns. He was 41 years old and was taken in his car, an Opel Kadett, to the 3rd barracks.ª Air Zone, where he was tortured.
He was then taken to DOI-Codi in Rio de Janeiro, on Rua Barão de Mesquita, in Tijuca. Reason: he was one of the recipients of letters sent by exiles in Chile. His daughter Eliana, then 15 years old, and his wife were also detained. They were later released, but Rubens did not return.
In a 1986 statement, Army doctor lieutenant Amílcar Lobo reported having found him in a cell with abdominal pain and a possible liver rupture.
According to his report, he recognized signs of torture and said that the patient probably had hours to live and little chance of surviving. He stated that he had mentioned the need for hospitalization. I found out later that Rubens had died.
The Army tried to hide the death. Initially, he said he was not with the former deputy and said that his vehicle had been intercepted by “terrorists”.
According to retired colonel Raymundo Ronaldo Campos, Major Francisco Demiurge Santos Cardoso, who acted as head of the operations area, asked him to take the car to a distant location and set it on fire.
The intention of the narrative about the interception was to cover up what had actually happened: “He died, he died, he died during the interrogation”, Cardoso reportedly told Campos. The retired colonel’s testimony was given to the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission on November 18, 2013.
Cecília de Barros Correia Viveiros de Castro, who brought the letters that had Rubens as one of the recipients from Chile, recognized the former deputy in the car that would take her to DOI-Codi. According to her, Rubens was red, had blood stains on his disheveled shirt and bulging eyes.
Cecília stated that Colonel Nereu de Matos Peixoto witnessed the torture against the former deputy. “I went in and out of the room where the screams were coming from,” he said in the police investigation opened in 1986 by the Military Court.
The CNV points out that officers from the 1st Army Police Battalion were witnesses to Rubens’ death at DOI-Codi. He cites the eyewitness identified as “Agent Y” and his superior, Colonel Ronald Leão, as people who would have transmitted what happened to Major Belham, who was commander of DOI-Codi.
Leão mentioned to the CNV other soldiers involved, such as Major Rubens Paim Sampaio and Captain Freddie Perdigão Pereira. Agent Y reported to the commission that Antônio Fernando Hughes de Carvalho had interrogated Rubens “with a non-traditional method”. In another statement, he identified this method as pressing against the wall.
Despite having his name preserved by the commission, Agent Y was later identified by the press as being retired colonel Armando Avólio Filho, former member of the PIC-PE (Criminal Investigations Platoon of the Army Police).
Major Belham told CNV that he was on vacation during those January days. He also said that there were no deaths at DOI-Codi while he was chief. The commission refutes the statement in the report.
Months after Rubens’ death, on November 5, 1971, Hughes received the Peacemaker Medal “as a special tribute from the Army, for the outstanding services rendered in the fight against subversion, thus contributing to the maintenance of law, order and institutions.”
In 2014, the Federal Public Ministry charged the soldiers Belham, Sampaio and Campos in the case, as well as the sergeant brothers Jurandyr Ochsendorf e Souza and Jacy Ochsendorf e Souza, who allegedly worked in hiding the corpse. He also mentioned other soldiers involved, but now deceased, such as Hughes, and spoke of hitherto unidentified agents.
Of the five, only José Antônio Nogueira Belham and Jacy Ochsendorf and Souza are still alive.
About Belham, it is stated, on the Transparency Portal, that he is a retired military officer, with a pay rank equivalent to that of a marshal. The most recent salary sheet available is almost R$36,000. According to the Army, he received 26 medals during his career. Jacy, in turn, is a retired military officer with the pay rank of major and a salary of R$23,000.
There are legal proceedings involving the case, but, to date, no one has been punished. The body was also not found, and its disappearance is based on hypotheses that involve it having been unearthed and then thrown into the sea or river.
In 1996, during the term of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
