SAO PAULO — Brazil’s authorities on Thursday signed a landmark settlement accepting accountability for the killing of Vladimir Herzog, a outstanding journalist and political prisoner whom the army dictatorship falsely claimed had killed himself whereas in custody 50 years in the past.
Herzog’s household celebrated the official admission of legal responsibility, which concerned the federal government agreeing to pay them compensation.
“This apology just isn’t merely symbolic,” the journalist’s son, Ivo Herzog, mentioned from the Vladimir Herzog Institute in Sao Paulo, a company devoted to preserving his reminiscence. “It’s an act by the state that makes us consider the present Brazilian state doesn’t suppose just like the Brazilian state of that point.”
Underneath the settlement, the federal government pays practically 3 million Brazilian reais (about $544,800) to the Herzog household as compensation for ethical damages. The settlement additionally contains retroactive payments of a monthly pension to Herzog’s widow, Clarice Herzog, from a previous court docket order.
Together with Rubens Paiva — whose story was portrayed in the 2025 Oscar-winning picture “I’m Still Here”— Herzog’s case turned a nationwide image of the combat to deliver justice to the victims of the army dictatorship that dominated Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Official estimates put the variety of useless and lacking in the course of the regime at 434.
Herzog, generally identified by his nickname Vlado, was a Jewish journalist born in 1937 in Osijek, a Yugoslavian metropolis that’s now a part of Croatia. His household escaped the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941 and settled in Brazil.
Herzog was the information director of a São Paulo tv station — the state-run TV Cultura — when, in October 1975, intelligence brokers summoned him for questioning on suspicion that he had ties to the outlawed Communist Celebration. Herzog, who had denied any connection to the Communist Celebration, walked into the Sao Paulo intelligence headquarters to testify and by no means got here out.
On the time, the Brazilian army claimed he had hanged himself in his cell with a belt. The federal government launched a public photograph of his physique, which was later confirmed to have been staged.
Jorge Messias, Brazil’s federal authorized counselor, praised the settlement Thursday as consultant of Brazil’s dedication to democracy.
“Immediately, we’re witnessing one thing unprecedented: The Brazilian state formally honoring the reminiscence of Vladimir Herzog,” he mentioned.
Messias mentioned the settlement held specific significance on this second of tumult for Brazil’s democracy.
Navy officers accused of plotting a coup to maintain former president Jair Bolsonaro in energy regardless of his failure to win re-election in 2022 are standing trial in a historic case before the Supreme Court,
“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 by way of for 21 years,” Messias mentioned.
Ivo Herzog mentioned the settlement closes a painful chapter in his household’s decades-long combat for justice.
In 1978, a court docket ruling issued whereas Brazil was nonetheless below dictatorship ordered an investigation into the circumstances of his father’s demise.
In 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found Brazil guilty of crimes towards humanity for Herzog’s killing and prevented the case from expiring below the statute of limitations. The ruling additionally required the state to acknowledge and formally apologize for the crime but it surely did not on the time.
“This has been a wrestle not solely of the Herzog household, however of all of the households of the murdered and disappeared,” Ivo Herzog mentioned.
____
Observe AP’s protection of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america