Rubens Paiva significant event disappearance
Arrest and disappearance
Hoping to catch "Adriano" and thus reach Lamarca, the military forces raided Paiva's house in Rio de Janeiro and arrested him on January 20, 1971. The action was conducted by armed men that claimed to be members of the Brazilian Air Force.
After the raid, Paiva was reported missing. According to documents published by the Brazilian military, the car that was conducting Paiva to the Centro de Operações de Defesa Interna (Center for Internal Defense Operations) prison was forcibly stopped by unknown individuals that rescued him.
Eunice, Paiva's wife, was also arrested during the same operation and remained incommunicable for twelve days. Eliana, one of the couple's daughter, then a 15-year-old young woman, was in the same prison for 24 hours. Eunice and Eliana were interrogated in the same DOI-CODI room where suspected communist agents were tortured. They claim to have seen blood, the feared pau de arara and the portrait of Paiva in the tokens of recognition. They also said to have heard the screams from prisoners apparently being tortured.
While his wife and daughter were being interrogated, Paiva was transferred to the Destacamento de Operações Internas (Department of Internal Operations). Though his body was never found, accounts given decades later to the National Truth Commission by an Army doctor and former military officers revealed that Paiva died on the second day after his arrest from injuries related to torture in the Army barrack where he had been held.In a 1971 letter, Eunice Paiva wrote, based on accounts by other political prisoners, that her husband was tortured on the same day she was arrested at the III Aerial Zone, located near Santos Dumont Airport, then under the command of [1]João Paulo Burnier, also accused of torturing and killing Stuart Angel.
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