Brazil’s top military court has closed a dictatorship-era case against nine Chinese citizens who were arrested and tortured in 1964, ending a process that stayed open for more than six decades despite the lack of evidence behind the original charges.

In a decision released on Sunday, Brazil’s Superior Military Court ruled that the case should legally have expired in 1981 but was never closed. As a result, a 50-volume case file remained on the docket.

The closure lifts a lingering point of friction in Brazil’s relations with China and formally clears the only surviving defendant, former Xinhua journalist Ju Qingdong, now 95 and living in Beijing.

The nine men were detained in Rio de Janeiro on April 3, 1964, three days after the military ousted President Joao Goulart. Police acting under the authority of Guanabara governor Carlos Lacerda broke into two flats before dawn and took the group away without a warrant. Neighbours watched from doorways as the officers forced the men downstairs.

The detainees included two accredited journalists and seven members of Chinese trade missions involved in commercial and cultural exchanges launched during the administrations of Janio Quadros and Goulart.

After the coup, officials claimed the group had been sent by Beijing to “spark a communist uprising” and poison the then-called Guanabara state (now Rio de Janeiro) governor at the time, Carlos Lacerda, even though security files already available at the time contained no evidence of such a plan.