Widow of activist killed by dictatorship receives compensation

The family of activist José Carlos Mata Machado , known as Zé Carlos, who was killed during the military dictatorship, received R$590,000 in moral damages. The compensation was paid by the federal government after the outcome of the lawsuit, which had been dragging on in the Federal Court of Minas Gerais. According to the family's defense, the compensation was paid at the end of July of this year.

The amount was received by Zé Carlos' widow, Maria Madalena Prata Soares, 78. The court ordering the payment came down in 2023, 50 years after the murder, which occurred in 1973.

The compensation lawsuit was filed in 1999 by Diamantino Advogados Associados, the law firm representing the family. After the appeals were rejected, the lawsuit entered the enforcement phase.

The militant was tortured and killed on October 28, 1973, in Recife, at the Information Operations Detachment – Internal Defense Operations Center (Doi-Codi).

A militant of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Action (APML), Zé Carlos had already been arrested during the Congress of the National Union of Students (UNE), in Ibiúna (SP), in 1968, when he spent eight months in the cells of the Department of Political and Social Order (Dops), in Belo Horizonte.

The young man became vice-president of UNE, after being president of the Academic Center of the Law course at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), which he entered in 1964 as the first place in the entrance exam.

In the opinion of lawyer Eduardo Diamantino, representing the widow, justice was served, although it took a while to be achieved.

"The delay in reaching a resolution is remarkable. Although belated, justice was served for the family. There is extensive case law that claims for compensation for acts violating fundamental rights committed by state agents are imprescriptible," he stated.