The São Paulo court ordered the State of São Paulo to pay compensation of R$100,000 to the family of worker José Vicente Correa, who in 1970, in ,.
Correa died in 2025, before seeing the second instance decision handed down by the São Paulo Court of Justice, in early March.
“I was happy with the result”, celebrates Sandro, Correa’s son, who was 10 years old when his father was arrested. “At the same time, it is very bad that the father was not able to enjoy this result that he wanted so much.”
The request for compensation was made at the insistence of Sandro, moved by the situation of his elderly father, who had spent half his life with a persistent ringing in his left ear, a consequence of the shocks suffered during torture sessions.
The action was filed in 2022 with a request for compensation of R$200,000. The first instance ruling, at the end of 2023, established the payment of compensation of R$50,000.
But the PGE-SP (Attorney General of the State of São Paulo) appealed the decision to the Court of Justice, as did the State Public Defender’s Office, which represents the worker’s family and requested an increase in the compensation amount, set at R$100,000 by the court.
“We received the ruling with a feeling of belated but necessary justice”, said the public defender responsible for the case, Bruno Del Preti. He celebrated the fact that the TJ accepted the request for increased compensation for moral damages, in addition to recognizing that the violence suffered by Correa was not just physical, but “intense moral violence”.
Del Preti draws attention, however, to the long waiting time between the first degree sentence and the collegial judgment by the TJ: two years.
“It is impossible not to record our deep sadness at the slowness of the justice system. It is regrettable that José Vicente passed away awaiting confirmation of this conviction by the court,” he said.
When contacted, the PGE reported in a note that “the State of São Paulo has not been notified of the decision until now” and did not comment on the case.
Correa had his home invaded by armed men in Pirituba, in the north of São Paulo, on January 29, 1970. He and his family had been sharing the two-room home with Carlos Alberto Savério, known as Adílson, for three days.
The worker had met him at union movement meetings in factories in Suzano, in Greater São Paulo, where he lived and worked. When he lost his job in Suzano and got a job at a paper factory in São Paulo, it was Savério who helped Correa find the house where he settled in Pirituba.
After an employee meeting at the factory, Savério said he had no way of returning home, and Correa called him to stay at his residence temporarily. A few days later, . He got out of bed and said he was surprised to find Saverio in the room with a gun in his hand.
Correa thought it was a robbery, took an old revolver he kept in the house and fired a warning shot into the air. After shouts of “police”, shots began to be fired into his house.
The men were part of Operation Bandeirante (Oban), a repressive state apparatus created by the Army and financed by businessmen, which maintained a torture center in the building where the 36th Police Station now operates, in the Paraíso neighborhood, in São Paulo. It was there that Correa, his wife (Lourdes) and Savério were taken in an investigation registered with the Public Security Secretariat as a “terrorism investigation”.
In practice, according to the judicial process, the worker was the target of physical and psychological torture for days on the premises of Oban and, later, the Dops (Department of Political and Social Order).
Accused of being part of Var-Palmares (Vanguarda Armada Revolucionárias), a left-wing organization that aimed to overthrow the dictatorship, Correa told Sheet who received many shocks to the ears, as well as punches, kicks and headbutts. “They even threw a sofa on top of me,” he said.
He declared that he did not understand anything about politics and that he had never carried out any militarized action. Although he knew some people mentioned as being involved with Var-Palmares, Correa said he didn’t even know they were part of the organization. He was eventually released on March 8, 1970.
“Detained at his residence, the author of the case remained in custody and subject to torture, without carrying out a formal act of interrogation”, said judge Bandeira Lins, designated rapporteur of the case at the Court of Justice of São Paulo.
The decision was not unanimous. Judge Leonel Costa stated, when voting against the compensation, that “regardless of the qualification attributed to the political regime of that period, the State had the legitimacy to implement preventive measures and to investigate crimes and conduct that undermined the political and social order”. According to him, there is no evidence that Correa was tortured by state public agents.
The State of São Paulo can still appeal. In the defense presented to the Court, he stated that there is no evidence that Correa was subjected to torture. He maintained that the alleged injuries could have occurred in the context of the approach, “in which there was resistance and the need to use force for restraint.”
