SAO PAULO — Brazil’s govt on Thursday signed a landmark settlement accepting accountability for the killing of Vladimir Herzog, a distinguished journalist and political prisoner whom the army dictatorship falsely claimed had killed himself whilst in custody 50 years in the past.
Herzog’s circle of relatives celebrated the reputable admission of legal responsibility, which concerned the federal government agreeing to pay them reimbursement.
“This apology isn’t simply symbolic,” the journalist’s son, Ivo Herzog, stated from the Vladimir Herzog Institute in Sao Paulo, a company devoted to protecting his reminiscence. “It’s an act through the state that makes us consider the present Brazilian state doesn’t suppose just like the Brazilian state of that point.”
Beneath the agreement, the federal government can pay just about 3 million Brazilian reais (about $544,800) to the Herzog circle of relatives as reimbursement for ethical damages. The settlement additionally comprises retroactive bills of a per thirty days pension to Herzog’s widow, Clarice Herzog, from a previous courtroom order.
In conjunction with Rubens Paiva — whose tale was once portrayed within the 2025 Oscar-winning image “I’m Nonetheless Right here”— Herzog’s case become a countrywide image of the struggle to convey justice to the sufferers of the army dictatorship that dominated Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Legit estimates put the collection of useless and lacking throughout the regime at 434.
Herzog, usually identified through his nickname Vlado, was once a Jewish journalist born in 1937 in Osijek, a Yugoslavian town this is now a part of Croatia. His circle of relatives escaped the Nazi profession of Yugoslavia in 1941 and settled in Brazil.
Herzog was once the inside track director of a São Paulo tv station — the state-run TV Cultura — when, in October 1975, intelligence brokers summoned him for wondering on suspicion that he had ties to the outlawed Communist Birthday party. Herzog, who had denied any connection to the Communist Birthday party, walked into the Sao Paulo intelligence headquarters to testify and not got here out.
On the time, the Brazilian army claimed he had hanged himself in his cellular with a belt. The federal government launched a public picture of his frame, which was once later confirmed to had been staged.
Jorge Messias, Brazil’s federal criminal counselor, praised the settlement Thursday as consultant of Brazil’s dedication to democracy.
“These days, we’re witnessing one thing unheard of: The Brazilian state officially honoring the reminiscence of Vladimir Herzog,” he stated.
Messias stated the settlement held explicit importance on this second of tumult for Brazil’s democracy.
Army officials accused of plotting a coup to stay former president Jair Bolsonaro in energy regardless of his failure to win re-election in 2022 are status trial in a historical case prior to the Very best Court docket,
“Within the 2022 election, we stood at a crossroads: Both to reaffirm democracy or transfer towards the closure of the Brazilian state, with all of the horrors we lived thru for 21 years,” Messias stated.
Ivo Herzog stated the agreement closes a painful bankruptcy in his circle of relatives’s decades-long struggle for justice.
In 1978, a courtroom ruling issued whilst Brazil was once nonetheless beneath dictatorship ordered an investigation into the cases of his father’s demise.
In 2018, the Inter-American Court docket of Human Rights discovered Brazil responsible of crimes towards humanity for Herzog’s killing and avoided the case from expiring beneath the statute of barriers. The ruling additionally required the state to recognize and officially express regret for the crime nevertheless it did not on the time.
“This has been a combat no longer most effective of the Herzog circle of relatives, however of all of the households of the murdered and disappeared,” Ivo Herzog stated.
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