Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, second from left, and her ministers attend a ceremony at which Rousseff signed a law establishing a truth commission in Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday Nov. 18, 2011. Rousseff established the truth commission to investigate human rights abuses by the military regime that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. -AP Photo

BRASILIA: President Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who was jailed and tortured during Brazil's military dictatorship, on Friday endorsed creation of a truth panel to probe human rights abuses during that dark period.

The president also promulgated a law lifting indefinite secrecy for public records and mandating their publication after a maximum of 50 years, another historic step to investigate crimes committed during the military dictatorship (1964-1985).

“Secrecy will never again be used to hide abuse of human rights,” Rousseff said to loud applause during an official ceremony.

The truth commission is meant to investigate issues including politically motivated abductions in the Cold War-era, rights abuses and murders over a time span longer than the dictatorship, 1946-1988.

It does not however lift an amnesty for those who carried out the repression, in effect since 1979, and upheld last year by the Supreme Court.

Brazil has acknowledged 400 abductions and presumed deaths during the dictatorship.

Other countries in southern South America which had right-wing dictatorships and political abuses and killings during the 1960s-80s, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile, have put some of the perpetrators of the era on trial. Brazil, however, has not.