A soap opera started almost 50 years ago is about to gain a new chapter.
The Lula and (CEMDP) government, a state body that has technical-administrative support from the Ministry of Human Rights, decided to reopen the case of the accident that killed the former president, whose causes have been a reason for controversy since the dictatorship.
At a CEMDP meeting this Friday (14) in Recife – the third of the collegiate since it was, after being extinguished by – yours should approve a reanalysis of the intricate episode.
Around 6 pm on August 22, 1976, a Sunday, the Opal in which JK was driven by his driver and friend Geraldo Ribeiro, was traveling at the height of the via Dutra, towards the river, when, unfortunate, crossed The central flowerbed, invaded the opposite track (towards São Paulo) and crashed into a trailer. JK and Ribeiro died with the collision.
Several investigations sought to elucidate because the driver lost control of Opal. Those driven by the dictatorship concluded that just before the collision the car was hit by a Viação Cometa bus when trying to exceed it. It was the same verdict as CNV (and an external commission of the House of Representatives in 2001. By this version, there was therefore an accident.
Other investigations concluded that JK was, in fact, the victim of a political attack, gathering evidence that there was no beat between the Opal and the Bus and that the car was uncovered for some external action – mechanical sabotage or even shot or poisoning of driver. This was the conclusion of the state commissions of truth – it is open by a working group with researchers from USP and Mackenzie universities and, besides.
As a middle ground, but closer to this second group, a civil inquiry conducted by the Federal Public Prosecutor (MPF) for six years, from 2013 to 2019, ruled out that there was a shock between the bus and the Opal, but it was impossible to say it is impossible to say or discard “the bombing hypothesis,” since there are not enough material elements to point out the cause of the accident or explain the loss of control of the car. “
Republic prosecutor Paulo Sérgio Ferreira Filho wrote that “there was severe failures in investigations carried out by the Brazilian State”, and cites among them the prosecution for guilty homicide against Josias Oliveira, the Comet bus driver who would have hit the Opal – he ended up acquitted . (In, Oliveira said he had received, five days after the accident, a cash offer to assume the blame.)
The MPF invited engineer and expert Sergio Ejzenberg, transport specialist, to examine reports made in 1976 and 1996 by the Carlos Éboli Criminalistics Institute (ICCE), from Rio – who supported the official shock thesis of the bus in Opal – and prepare one New study on the accident, which took three years to complete.
Finished in 2019, the work of Ejzenberg (volunteer) came to light in 2021, when the MPF made public the inquiry. It technically demolishes the previous reports and rejects the hypothesis that a collision caused the disaster. The expertise conducted by the engineer, wrote the prosecutor Ferreira Filho, is “key piece” to understand what happened and constitutes the “greatest contribution that the (…) civil inquiry brought to the case”.
Ejzenberg’s report was also essential for the Lula government to want to resume the episode now. The decision in this regard came from the head of the Special Advisory Defense of Democracy, Memory and Truth of the Ministry of Human Rights, and has the endorsement of the president of CEMDP, prosecutor, and the majority of the board.
Last year, the Ministry of Human Rights was urged by former São Paulo councilman Gilberto Natalini, who presided over the Municipal Truth Commission, reopening the investigation. The main argument of the request was Ejzenberg’s report – and the admission of the MPF that it was not possible to prove, with the available elements, the cause of the disaster that killed JK.
Nilmário Miranda welcomed the request and forwarded it to the holders of the folder (first, after) and the CEMDP. Since (in 1995) set deadlines, already expired, for requirements – there was a request of the family of JK – the tendency is that the reopening of the case will be justified with the argument of clarification of historical truth. Whatever the outcome, there will be no financial compensation.
But will a resumption of the case be able to clarify numerous obscure points of the episode? In certain cases it seems impossible. As Ejzenberg’s report points out, “the suspicion of mechanical sabotage [do Opala de JK] It was not unfounded “, but” the total dismantling of the car “by the researchers of the dictatorship in the courtyard of the Resende Police Station (RJ) prevented the expertise of the time from clarifying the doubt.
In the medical expertise of the time, no toxicological report was made for distinct substances from alcohol, to find out if there may have been Geraldo Ribeiro’s poisoning or poisoning (the JK driver).
According to the driver of the trailer who hit the Opal, Ribeiro seemed faded even before the collision. The hypothesis that he was shot before was avoided. An expert (Alberto Carlos de Minas) said he saw a hole -like hole in Ribeiro’s skull during an exhumation in 1996. At the time, a piece of metal similar to a bullet was found inside the coffin. Other experts stated that it was a kind of nail, generating controversy among the attacks of the attack thesis.
One of these fans was writer and journalist Carlos Heitor Cony, who addressed the theme in books (“Memorial of Exile”, the last two with Ana Lee). He was a reporter for Manchete magazine at the time of the accident and was at the hotel where JK stopped just before the collision. He said he heard from the parking lot that the driver Geraldo Ribeiro, after leaving the Opal stopped for about 45 minutes, was surprised by the car and asked him if anyone had moved him. The keeper denied.
An undisputed fact is that JK was a stone in the shoe of the military. One of the leaders of the Broad Front, a group of opposition to the dictatorship, aimed to run for presidency at the Electoral College in the 1978 indirect elections. Supported by the US, Operation Condor, a coordinated action between Southern Cone dictatorships to pursue political opponents, planned to eliminate leadership Policies of the region.
American journalist Jack Anderson revealed in the newspaper “The Washington Post” a letter sent by Manuel Contreras, chilean secret police chief and head of Operation Condor, João Figueiredo, then head of SNI and future president-president, mentioning JK and the diplomat and Chilean activist as threats to the stability of the region’s governments. Letelier was murdered by the Chilean dictatorship in an attack on Washington in 1976.
“The evidence that would demonstrate that he was murdered were destroyed and hidden. In this scenario, the burden of proof against the state is legally reversed,” says lawyer Lea Vidigal, a member of the group that supported the investigation of the State Truth Commission and co -author (with Alessandro Octaviani and Marco Aurélio Braga) from the book “The Murder of JK for the dictatorship – official documents”.
“It is not the victim who has to prove that he was murdered. In a regime of exception that pursued and killed opponents and who hid the proofs, it is the state that has to prove that it is innocent. Therefore, the state is responsible, and has to be declared the murder of JK. “
