Matt Carr's Infernal Machine

Not many people outside Brazil will be familiar with the name Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra.   As commander at the Brazilian army’s Department of Information Operations, known as DOI-CODI, in São Paulo, from 1970 to 1974, the man known as ‘Colonel Ustra’ was one of the most notorious torturers under Brazil’s military dictatorship, which ruled the country from 1964 to 1985.

Ustra introduced and oversaw a range of procedures against leftwing militants that included inserting rats in women’s vaginas and forcing young children to watch their parents being tortured.  One of the thousands of people tortured...