The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an autonomous institution of the Organization of American States, held the Brazilian state responsible for the disappearance of 62 members of the Araguaia guerrilla movement during civil strife in the 1970s.

The Araguaia -- named after Brazil's major river -- was active 1966-74 as an armed group communists and Trotskyites who faced frequent crackdowns under Brazil's military dictatorship. It was so named because its activity against military rule was mostly concentrated along the 1,632-mile river.

Although Brazil returned to democratic rule in the 1980s, campaigners said that little was done to answer questions from families of the disappeared militants.

The Inter-American Court, which has headquarters in San Jose, Costa Rica, has been monitoring human rights violations in Latin America since it was established in 1979. The court says it aims to ensure the application and interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights and other relevant treaties.

More recently the court's work was supplemented by campaigning groups. Human Rights Watch in a report said Brazil needs to improve its human rights record before it hosts the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Jose Genoino, one of a few survivors from the Araguaia group and founder with President Lula da Silva of Brazil's ruling Workers Party, criticized the lack of progress on investigating the disappearances. Both Lula and President-elect Dilma Rousseff went through tough times under the dictatorship and Rousseff says she was tortured in the dictatorship's prisons.

The court ruled that a Brazilian Amnesty Law enforced in 1979 couldn't impede the investigation and punishment of those responsible for grave violations of human rights at the time.

The amnesty law, recently upheld by the Brazilian Supreme Court, barred prosecution of both government agents and leftist militants who committed politically related crimes during the 1964-85 military rule.

However, the court said the law was incompatible with Brazil's commitments under the American Convention on Human Rights and "cannot continue to be a hurdle to the investigation" to determine what happened to the activists.

It called on the Brazilian government to investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators in the Araguaia case. If, as widely feared, the activists died in the military's onslaught, the government must find and identify the bodies of the disappeared and make amends to the surviving relatives, the court said.

The court wants Brazilian authorities to release archived information about the Araguaia group and other human rights violations under military rule.

The ruling followed representations made on behalf of the families of the Araguaia activists by three Brazilian non-government organizations, the Center for Justice and International Law, the Torture Never Again Group from Rio do Janeiro and the Families Committee of the Sao Paulo Political Dead and Disappeared.

The 126-page ruling also calls for Brazil to adopt new legislation to protect citizens against offensive acts leading to disappearances.

The ruling established a $3,000 payment for each relative of the victims as compensation for expenses incurred in the search for the disappeared and $45,000 for each direct relative and $15,000 for non-direct relatives as compensation for "immaterial harm."

Paulo Vannuchi, the head of the Brazilian government's National Human Rights Secretariat, said authorities understand the ruling must be obeyed. Brazil is taking other steps to clarify what happened under military rule, he said, in a reference to plans for a truth commission.

Although Lula called for an update on the search for bodies of those who disappeared in Araguaia, the army hasn't come forward with information.

Meanwhile, campaigners cite continuing violations in Brazil. A Human Rights Watch report documented thousands of extrajudicial killings in Rio, host of the 2016 Olympics.

A 122-page Human Rights Watch report cited 51 cases in which police appeared to have executed alleged criminal suspects and then reported the victims had died in shootouts while resisting arrest.

Rio and Sao Paulo police together kill more than 1,000 people every year in such alleged confrontations, Human Rights Watch said. While some of these "resistance" killings by police are legitimate acts of self-defense, many others are extrajudicial executions, said the report.

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