According to court testimony quoted in the country’s truth commission report, Brazil: Never Again, published in 1985, military officers attended formal “torture classes” at army police units where they watched slides depicting various excruciating methods. During these sessions, prisoners were brought in for “practical demonstrations”—brutally tortured while as many as a hundred army sergeants looked on and learned. The report states that “one of the first people to introduce this practice into Brazil was Dan Mitrione, an American police officer.
