4
The crime described in Article 2 of Decree Law No. 25,475 is terrorism, whereas the
crime described in Decree-Law No. 25,659 is aggravated terrorism, whose nomen
iuris is treason. The military courts have been able to use this distinction to acquit
or to decline jurisdiction in the case of persons accused of aggravated terrorism and
to remand them to the regular courts, which has jurisdiction to prosecute simple
terrorism.
3.
Decree-Law No. 25,659 was in force on October 14 and 15, 1993,
when the National Police detained the Chilean citizens. Therefore, the crime of
aggravated terrorism with which they were charged was covered in the applicable
law, as was the penalty it carried. At the time of their conviction, May 3, 1994, the
applicable punishment was life imprisonment.
For the very same reasons I concurred with some of the findings of this judgment, I
do not agree with the Court’s finding that the State violated Article 8(2)(h) of the
Convention. In the consideranda of the judgment, which summarizes the facts, it
was shown that the Chilean citizens did have recourse to a higher court, even though
this was the military justice system.
For the same reasons, I must also dissent from the Court’s finding that the State
violated Article 8(5) of the Convention.
While criminal proceedings should be public, as Peru’s Constitution recognizes,
proceedings such as those instituted in the case of the Chilean citizens, or those that
ought to be instituted, cannot necessarily be public and the circumstances
surrounding this case certainly fit the exception allowed under Article 8(5) of the
Convention.
Finally, I disagree with the Court’s finding that the State violated Article 5 of the
Convention, for the following reasons:
1.
In addition to the emergency provisions that Peru created to stamp
out terrorist violence and further the country’s pacification, it also established
sentencing guidelines for those convicted of the crime of aggravated terrorism
constituting treason. These guidelines and regulations, like any others enacted in
Peru, must be published in order to take effect. They thus find their way into the
public domain.
2,
These are the provisions that, in my judgment, the judgment should
have taken into consideration, not the testimony from the attorneys of the two
Chilean citizens. Theirs was a purely second-hand account, with no basis in fact,
especially since the statement itself acknowledged that their knowledge of the
treatment the convicted men received was pure hearsay.
Fernando Vidal-Ramírez
Judge ad hoc
Manuel E. Ventura-Robles
Secretary