Brazilian Panel Says Ex-Leader Was Murdered

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/world/americas/brazilian-panel-says-ex-leader-was-murdered.html

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SANTIAGO, Chile — The Truth Commission in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, said Tuesday that Juscelino Kubitschek, the country’s president from 1956 to 1961, was murdered in 1976 in a conspiracy by the military dictatorship ruling Brazil at the time.

Mr. Kubitschek, long thought to have died in a car accident on the highway between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, was killed as a result of his driver being shot in the head, said Gilberto Natalini, the commission’s president. Mr. Natalini said the commission based its conclusion on the testimony of witnesses and other evidence, including a metal fragment found in the cranium of the driver, Geraldo Ribeiro, when his body was exhumed in 1996.

The São Paulo commission, one of various such entities in Brazil examining abuses by the military dictatorship, had sought to exhume Mr. Ribeiro’s remains in recent months as part of its investigation, but delivered its report without doing so.

Its findings will be sent to federal authorities and the National Truth Commission, which is also looking into Mr. Kubitschek’s death. Even if prosecutors open an investigation into the matter and eventually charge individuals with killing Mr. Kubitschek, a 1979 amnesty law still shields from prosecution those responsible for politically motivated crimes during the period of military rule.