SAO PAULO: Prominent Brazilian journalist Miriam Leitao spoke out Wednesday on the torture she was subjected to by the military regime in the 1970s, rejecting army claims that its units committed no abuses.
Speaking publicly on her detention for the first time since she testified before a military tribunal in 1973, Leitao, one of Brazil's most influential journalists, recalled being severely beaten as a young pregnant student detained at an army barracks where she was locked in a dark cell with a large snake.
"I had no idea if it was day or night, in a room sealed off with black plastic to keep it dark. And I was there, naked, alone with a boa. Me and my fear, which was even worse because I couldn't see anything, but I knew the snake was there," she told website Observatorio de la Prensa.
Leitao was arrested in December 1972 by a group of armed men who took her to an army barracks where she was interrogated.
"They hit me, kicked me, pulled my hair, beat my head against the wall. I was bleeding from the back of my head," she said. She was also subjected to a mock execution and frightened with vicious dogs, she said.
Because of a 1979 amnesty law, Brazil is the only South American country that has never put military officials on trial for crimes committed during its dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985.
President Dilma Rousseff, who was herself imprisoned and tortured by the military regime, launched a Truth Commission in 2012 to investigate dictatorship-era crimes.
Leitao said she had decided to speak out after military officials told the commission that no army units had deviated from regulation conduct during the dictatorship.
"The military officials said there had been no deviation of conduct. I lived the deviation of conduct," she told O Globo newspaper.
The commission is due to wrap up its work in December. Leitao said that after her disappearance, it took her family nearly a month to learn where she was.
"I weighed 50 kilograms (110 pounds) when I went into the barracks. When I got out three months later, I weighed 39 (86 pounds). I arrived there one month pregnant and there was a large risk of losing my baby," she said.
In the end, her baby survived the ordeal and was born with no health problems. Leitao is today a reporter and economic analyst for Globo, the country's largest media house.
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