CENTRAL ARMY HOSPITAL (HCE)

HOSPITAL CENTRAL DO EXÉRCITO

Address: Rua Francisco Manoel, 126, Benfica, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Themes: Repressive Structures
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Snyder

The Central Army Hospital (HCE) was an important component of the repressive structure mounted by the military dictatorship in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The space served to rehabilitate political prisoners who had been tortured in other official or clandestine facilities and to forge expert reports for victims killed by agents of the State. The locale is still associated with the assassination and forced disappearance of activists who opposed the dictatorship. Standout cases include that of Manoel Alves de Oliveira, who died in 1964 in the HCE after being imprisoned and tortured in the Military Villa [69]; Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira, who passed away in 1971 after being interrogated and tortured under the hospital’s care; and Marilena Villas Boas, who died in the hospital in 1971 after having been kidnapped and tortured by state agents (Rio de Janeiro, 2001).

The Central Army Hospital was founded in 1890 through a decree signed by Marshal Manoel Deodoro da Fonseca (1889-1891), replacing the old Military Hospital that had stood in an old mansion in Morro do Castelo since 1768. The name change was accompanied by the construction of new hospital facilities in the Benfica neighborhood in the central region of Rio de Janeiro. The hospital was inaugurated in June of 1902.

During the military dictatorship, the activists sent to the HCE were kept in specific wings of the hospital, such as the psychiatric infirmary and the thirteenth prison infirmary.

 The decision to hospitalize political prisoners was aimed, in many cases, at guaranteeing the physical recovery of the victims so that they could be interrogated under torture again at a later date, as well as at continuing their psychological torture. A series of testimonies makes this evident. The case of Estrella Bohadana is one of the most emblematic. Detained and tortured in the 1° Battalion of the Armored Infantry of Barra Mansa (1° BIB) and later taken to the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-Codi) where she was submitted to violent torture that caused a miscarriage, Estrella was moved to the HCE, where she arrived in a coma. In the words of the activist:

The state in which one returned from torture was, in general, a very, very unfortunate state. Really, if it hadn’t been for the move to the hospital…I got there, I went into a coma and had no idea what was going on. When I came to, I was already in a hospital cell. And then for a long time I couldn’t walk, I was really weak. But even so, the interrogations continued, there, inside the same hospital, without physical torture, of course, but with obvious psychological, emotional torture, I mean, with lots of threats. You’re imprisoned in the hospital and being threatened with, “as soon as you get out of the hospital, we’re going to break you, it’s going to happen, we’re going to make you disappear.” So, it was a very violent business, from an emotional point of view. Right there in the HCE, I had contact with other comrades. Marcos Arruda, who was in the male wing, was also barbarously tortured. There, no one had been less than barbarously tortured. And when your body couldn’t take it anymore, you had to make a stop in the hospital. The hospital wasn’t a guarantee of anything. Me I , for example, when I left the hospital, I went back to being tortured. I went back to Barra Mansa, and then I went back to being tortured, everything all over again. I mean, when I thought that the thing had ended. Because, really, what could they want from a prisoner after three months of torture? There is no more information to give. There is a sadist, Machiavellian side[…] In fact, it was a situation of absolute inequality (Estrella Dalva Bohadana. Testimony given to Project “Shield-Bearer Tower”).

Marcos Arruda, in his testimony to the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission (CEV-Rio), described being transferred directly from the HCE to the DOI-CODI, highlighting that the hospital served to “prepare” the activists for new interrogations: 

In the DOI-Codi of Rio de Janeiro, the only person whose name I remember is Captain Gomes Carneiro, who oversaw my transportation from the Central Army Hospital to the DOI-CODI on December 22, 1970. I went through three days of terror in the DOI-CODI until December 25, Christmas day, and spent all of Christmas night listening to screams of those being tortured, waiting for my turn to be taken. Maybe I had been spared because I had a seizure. They stopped giving me medicine for three days, and then they took me back to the HCE. […] the director of the HCE at the time was General Galeno, the vice director was Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Aquino and Doctors Elias and Mota were still there. The head of security was Major Sadi, later replaced by Captain Morais, who by exception treated us like human beings. The person responsible for the treatment of the prisoners was Major Boia, who prepared us to return to torture once we had gotten better (Marcos Arruda, testimony given to CEV-Rio and CNV on September 17th, 2013).

Maria Dalva Bonet, in turn, confirmed having been taken to the HCE because of torture she had suffered in the Pavilion of Criminal Investigation (PIC) in her testimony to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. She was sent to the PIC again after her recovery: 

[…] on January 28th, 1969 she was imprisoned for the second time; […] she was taken to the PIC (Pavilion of Criminal Investigations) which would become the DOI-CODI/RJ, in the Army Police building on Barão de Mesquita Street […] she was left at the HCE because she was badly bruised with hematomas; she lost the skin on her hands and feet because of electrical shocks; […] after the HCE, the testifier returned to the Barão de Mesquita, not to go to the DOI-CODI/RJ but instead to the infirmary; in this period she was not physically tortured, but the soldiers would go there just to torment her psychologically; the testifier wasn’t walking, and the soldiers would go there to say that the testifier would become a paralytic; they told her of atrocities that they had committed with other imprisoned activists (Maria Dalva Bonet. Testimony given to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (Brazil and Rio de Janeiro, August 2013).

 But there is evidence that in addition to being the space for the recovery of the political prisoners, the HCE was also a space for interrogations and physical torture. This was recently proven in the case of Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira, a member of the aid network for the Eighth of October Revolutionary Movement (MR-8). He was imprisoned on August 1, 1971, taken to the Department of Social and Political Order of the State of Guanabara (DOPS/GB), and later, to the DOI-CODI, where he was interrogated under torture. Due to the violence suffered, Raul was taken to the HCE by recommendation of an official doctor on August 4 of that year, where he passed away about a week later. An investigation undertaken by the family of Raul Amaro and by the CEV-Rio verified that he had been interrogated while in the hospital’s care on August 11, which was confirmed in an official letter authored by the Ministry of the Army (Brasil nunca mais digital, p.81). The document reports that on that date, Sylvio Frota, Commander of the Army, ordered Commissioner Eduardo Rodrigues and a clerk, Jeovah Silva, to report to the director of the HCE “in order to interrogate the prisoner Raul Amaro Nin Ferreira.” Later, on August 12, a report from the Ministry of the Army revealed that “the subversive confesses his connection with MR-8; based on our understanding of the material found in his possession and the ties that he maintains with Eduardo Lessa Peixoto de Azevedo, Raul Amaro is openly a militant of the organization. There was no time to inquire of him regarding all of the material found in his possession” (Brasil nunca mais digital, p. 90). According to the National Truth Commission (CNV), this document is a tell-tale sign that Raul died while being interrogated in the HCE.

More recently, the medical-legal report elaborated by expert Nelson Massini and presented in a public hearing organized by the CEV-Rio in August 2014 proved that Raul Amaro was physically tortured in the HCE in at least two distinct moments. The report points to the existence of “a difference in the quantity and types of lesions described between the exam done in his admission to the Central Army Hospital and those described in the autopsy, which are greater in number than those that the admission exam identifies” (Rio de Janeiro, 2014). This indicates that Raul suffered new lesions after checking into the hospital. The expert concludes that the lesions “stemmed from a process of physical suffering (torture)”. This was the first case in which the practice of physical torture within a military hospital during the dictatorship was proven.

In addition to the assistance and cooperation with the practice of illegal imprisonment and torture, the HCE also helped to falsify official reports on victims of state repression. Such action was taken mainly to conceal the true causes of death of the activists, who had been assassinated by agents of the State, and the systematic practice of torture against those who opposed the dictatorship. Therefore, in the majority of the cases, the doctors made statements about the death of the individual in the hospital, when, in reality, he or she was already dead upon arrival at the hospital; they attributed false causes of deaths, alleging “suicide”, “trampling”, or “gunshot wound” as the cause, when in fact, they had been assassinated by State agents; and they omitted from their reports information about the lesions that indicated torture.

In this context, it is worth highlighting the case of Severino Viana Colou, killed in 1969 while held in the First Company of the Army Police, in the Military Villa [69] of Deodoro, in Rio de Janeiro. The autopsy report, modified by the medical service of the HCE, reiterated the official version that Severino had committed suicide inside his cell. A team of experts with the CNV managed to deconstruct this version of events and identify inconsistencies in the report, concluding that Severino was assassinated by state agents. According to the CNV, his death happened “by homicide, strangling, or another cause possibly omitted from the medical-legal analysis.” Another relevant case is that of José Mendes de Sá Roriz, a member of the Brazilian Communist Party, who, according to the CNV, was killed during torture in 1973 in the DOI-CODI. His death certificate stated, however, that José Mendes had died in the HCE and did not identify the cause of his death, claiming that this information would depend on “the requested laboratory tests.”

The history of the HCE brings up an important discussion about the role of medical professionals during the military dictatorship. Instead of saving lives and attending to the health of the sick, some of these professionals were accomplices in the carrying out of grave human rights violations. The participation of doctors in torture even involved their presence during interrogations, where they would supervise torture and resuscitate the prisoner, administering treatment before, during, and after the sessions. During the sessions, the doctor determined if the prisoner could continue being mistreated or if it was necessary to reduce the degree of violence so the prisoner would not lose consciousness and thus be able to continue giving information. The participation of doctors also involved the omission of tests and the falsification of reports, autopsies, and death certificates. In this sense, covering up clear signs of torture and concealing of real causes of death of those who had been assassinated was common. Finally, medical professionals concealed bodies. Coroners were normally tied to the Secretariat of Public Security and would, in some cases, contribute to the forced disappearance of activists. We can identify the names of the doctors who served the military regime in Rio de Janeiro. They are: Rubens Pedro Macuco Janini, Amílcar Lobo, Ricardo Agnese Fayad, and Olympio Pereira da Silva (Brazil, 2014, v. 1, p. 877, 918, 923, 926).

On September 23, 2014, the CNV and the CEV-Rio began to investigate the HCE in order to search for the patient medical records from the military dictatorship era and to identify the places where political prisoners were held inside the hospital. The patient medical records were not found, and the Army denied their existence. Despite changes to the physical building, mostly caused by renovations that began in the late 1980s, former political prisoners that accompanied the investigation – Marcos Arruda, Ana Miranda, and Paulo César Ribeiro – managed to recognize the wing in which the prison/infirmary had probably been located during the time of their imprisonment.

Later, on November 14, 2014, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office with the support of the Federal Police, fulfilled the search-and-seizure warrant inside the HCE. An anonymous tip made to the MPF, revealed that patient medical records for political prisoners were deliberately hidden on the eve of the investigation carried out by the CNV and the CEV-Rio in September of that year, and that they could be found in a building attached to the hospital. During the search, patient records from 1940-1969 and 1975-1983 were found in a locked room in an adjacent building, in addition to plastic bags with records of patients attended to during the military dictatorship, proving that the Army had, in fact, concealed relevant documents. Dossiers with names, photos, and information on members and advisors of the commissions that had participated in the investigations during the dictatorship were located during the same search.

On December 9, 2014, the CEV-Rio held a public hearing to hand over the medical patient records of three activists that were admitted to the HCE between 1970-1971: Maria Dalva Bonet, Abigail Paranhos, and Vera Silvia Magalhães. The documentation was found by the Commission in the archives of dictator Médici in the Brazilian Institute of Geography and History. This was one more piece of evidence indicating that the military presidents were always aware of the torture carried out by state agents and that patient records exist and are being concealed by the Brazilian Army in a fully democratic period. Even today, family members of the dead and disappeared, as well as former political prisoners, fight to have access to these medical patient records.

In partnership with the Ministry of Justice Amnesty Commission’s project Testimony Clinics of Rio de Janeiro, the CEV-Rio promoted the “Testimony of the Truth about HCE”, on July 30, 2015. During this event, testimonies of former political prisoners were heard. Ana Bursztyn Miranda, Antonio Rodrigues da Costa, Fátima Setúbal, Marcos Arruda, and Paulo César Azevedo Ribeiro shared their experiences from when they had been held in the HCE, the conditions they suffered, the heavy medication that was utilized, and the hospital’s refusal to hand over the medical patient records. Antônio Rodrigues da Costa, an ex-Army parachuter who interned for nine months in the psychiatric division of the HCE, said:

They threatened to give me shocks in the testicles if I didn’t take the medicine they ordered. At first I tried to joke with the doctors, because I was very drugged up, and at times, I would sleep two days straight (Antônio Rodrigues da Costa. Testimony given to CEV-Rio on July 30th, 2015).

Invited by the CEV-Rio to participate in the event, attorney Sérgio Suiama told those present that the progress of the search-and-seizure of the HCE had been suspended due to an injunction that the Regional Federal Court gave to retired General José Antonio Nogueira Belham, commander of the Rio de Janeiro DOI-CODI between 1970-1971. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office appealed the decision, and since the beginning of 2016, family members of the dead and disappeared political prisoners as well as former political prisoners themselves continue fighting for access to the medical patient records.