4
apply only to the Barrios Altos Case” (supra para. 9).
disagreement as to the judgment’s meaning or scope.
Therefore, there is
13.
Based on the foregoing, the Court finds that the request conforms to Article
67 of the Convention and Article 58 of the Court’s Rules of Procedure and therefore
declares it admissible. Accordingly, the Court will now proceed to interpret those
aspects of the judgment whose meaning or scope is at issue.
VI
THE AMNESTY LAWS’ INCOMPATIBILITY WITH
THE CONVENTION
The Commission’s arguments
14.
In its request for interpretation, the Commission asked the Court to
determine the following:
Is the Judgment in the Barrios Altos Case, concerning the incompatibility of laws Nos.
26479 and 26492 with the American Convention, general in scope or confined to that
specific case only?
The Commission’s contention is that “the effects of the Court’s judgment are not
confined exclusively to the Barrios Altos Case, but rather to all those in which those
amnesty laws were applied.” It points out that paragraph 44 of the Court’s
judgment of March 14, 2001 “can hardly be interpreted any other way.” It further
notes that in Ombudsman Report No. 57, titled “Amnesty vs. Human Rights: in
search of justice,” approved in Ombudsman Resolution No. 019-2001/DP, the Office
of the Ombudsman noted that:
The Judgment of the Inter-American Court in the Barrios Altos Case is general in scope,
because the laws themselves -Nº 26479 and Nº 26492- were violations. The laws are
incompatible with the Convention not just in the Barrios Altos Case but in all cases
involving human rights violations wherein the Convention applies.
The Court’s observations
15.
When addressing the amnesty laws’ incompatibility with the American
Convention, the Court wrote the following in the judgment on the merits in the
present case:
[…] The Court considers that all amnesty provisions, provisions on prescription and the
establishment of measures designed to eliminate responsibility are inadmissible,
because they are intended to prevent the investigation and punishment of those
responsible for serious human rights violations such as torture, extrajudicial, summary
or arbitrary executions and forced disappearance, all of them prohibited because they
violate non-derogable rights recognized by international human rights law [;]
[…] The Court, in accordance with the arguments put forward by the Commission and
not contested by the State, considers that the amnesty laws adopted by Peru prevented
the victims’ next of kin and the surviving victims in this case from being heard by a
judge, as established in Article 8(1) of the Convention; they violated the right to judicial
protection embodied in Article 25 of the Convention; they prevented the investigation,
capture, prosecution and conviction of those responsible for the events that occurred in
Barrios Altos, thus mailing to comply with Article 1(1) of the Convention, and they
obstructed clarification of the facts of this case. Finally, the adoption of self-amnesty
laws that are incompatible with the Convention meant that Peru failed to comply with