Supreme Military Court

   The highest court in the military justice system during Brazil’s 1964–1985 military dictatorship. It was composed of 15 judges, all appointed for life: four generals, three admirals, three air force commanders, and five civilians. Formerly based in Rio de Janeiro, the court moved to the capital, Brasília, during the presidency of Emílio Garrastazú Médici (1969– 1974), when the military’s “dirty war” against its perceived political enemies reached its peak.

   The Court was the final court of appeals in a process that began, at the bottom, with torture centers—for example, Operação Bandeirantes (OBAN, Operation Pioneer) or the Destacamento de Operações Internas–Comando Operacional de Defesa Interna (DOI–CODI, Information Operations Detachment–Operational Command for Internal Defense)—which would extract written confessions from political prisoners. Once the confessions were obtained, the prisoners were allowed civilian lawyers, who represented them at trials before regional military tribunals, composed of four military officers and one civilian judge. During the trials, some defendants—an estimated 25 percent—denounced their confessions as having been obtained through torture. Usually, such denunciations would have no effect on the verdict—the defendant would be dismissed as a liar and found guilty. Still, the denunciations would be added to the trial’s transcript.

   All verdicts from the military tribunals were appealed to the Supreme Military Court, and on the rare occasion that a tribunal ruled in favor of the defendant, the Court almost always reversed the decision. All the documents related to the proceedings of the tribunals and the Court were stored in the Court’s archive. It was these documents that were secretly photocopied by the Brasil: Nunca Mais (BNM, Brazil: Never Again) project, documents that contained clear evidence that the government employed torture.