Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has ordered the country's intelligence service, ABIN, to publish dictatorship-era secret files by the end of the year, the official Agencia Brasil news agency reported on Sunday.

The report said that Lula signed a decree on Saturday, instructing the ABIN to turn over all intelligence files from the 1964-85 military dictatorship to the National Archive by Dec. 31.

The secret police can only withhold documents that would endanger lives or the viability of the Brazilian state, the report said.

Lula's order reversed the 2002 decree, signed by Lula's predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso in the closing hours of his presidency, which had sealed the documents for 50 years.

Brazil's Defense Ministry claimed in 2003 that all such files were destroyed, but after the Brazilian newspaper Correio Brazilense published in 2004 photos of a naked man, an alleged political prisoner, holding his head in his hands, the Ministry admitted it had lied.

The publication triggered a campaign to make public the documents by the human rights groups which want to find out who was arrested by the secret police, whether they were tortured and what happened to their bodies, so as to enable their relatives to recover their remains.

The military has long tried to block the publication of the documents, citing a 1979 amnesty which prevents anyone from prosecuting either former-leftist guerrillas or the military.

Human rights activists say some officials still in power could be implicated by the documents being released.

Source: Xinhua