61
165. Most recently, the same Supreme Court of Justice of Chile, in the case of
Lecaros Carrasco, annulled a verdict of not guilty and invalidated the application
of the Chilean amnesty in Decree Law No. 2.191 of 1978 via a replacement
Judgment in the following terms:232
[T]he crime of kidnapping [...] has the character of a crime against humanity,
and therefore, it is not necessary to invoke amnesty as a cause to extinguish
criminal responsibility.233
[T]he amnesty law enacted by the de facto authority which took on the
"Supreme Command of the Nation," [...] must be interpreted in a way that
conforms with the protective covenants of fundamental rights of the individual
and sanctions the serious violations committed against them during the period
in which said legal body is in force.234
[T]he mentioned prohibition of the auto-exoneration not only concerns the
obvious situations in which those in power have used the advantageous
position which they held to extinguish responsibility, as is the case with selfgiven amnesty, but it also implies a suspension of the effectiveness of
preexisting institutions, such as […] the statute of limitations for criminal
proceedings, designed to operate in a state of social peace in which they are
called to serve, but not in the situations of harm to the institutions in which
the State was set up, and for the specific benefit of those that provoked said
breakdown.235
166. On the other hand, the Constitutional Court of Peru, in the case of
Santiago Martín Rivas, in resolving an extraordinary remedy and a remedy of
violations to constitutional rights, discussed the scope of the State’s obligations in
the manner:236
[T]he Constitutional Court considers that the obligation of States to
investigate the facts and punish those responsible for the violation of human
rights declared in the Judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
includes not only the nullity of those processes where the amnesty laws […]
had been applied, after the declaration that such laws had no legal effect, but
also any practice intended to prevent the investigation and punishment for
violations of the rights to life and personal integrity.237
The obligations assumed by the Peruvian State with the ratification of treaties
on human rights include the duty to guarantee those rights that, in
accordance with International Law, are irrevocable and for which the State is
internationally obligated to sanction said involvement. In response to the
mandate contained in […] the Constitutional Procedural Code, treaties are
sought which have crystallized the absolute prohibition of those who have
232
Supreme Court of Justice of Chile, Case of Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco followed for the
crime of aggravated kidnapping, Rol No. 47.205, Recurso No. 3302/2009, Order 16698, Judgment of
Appeals, and Order 16699, Judgment of Replacement, of May 18, 2010.
233
Supreme Court of Justice of Chile, Case of Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco, Judgment of
Reemplazo, supra note 232, Considering clause 1.
234
Supreme Court of Justice of Chile, Case of Claudio Abdón Lecaros, Judgment of Reemplazo,
supra note 232, Considering clause 2.
235
Supreme Court of Justice of Chile, Case of Claudio Abdón Lecaros Carrasco, Judgment of
Reemplazo, supra note 232, Considering clause 3.
236
Cf. Constitutional Court of Peru, Case of Santiago Martín Rivas, Extraordinary Remedy, Case
file No. 4587-2004-AA/TC, Judgment of November 29, 2005, para. 63.
237
Constitutional Court of Peru, Case of Santiago Martín Rivas, Extraordinary Remedy, supra
note 236, para. 63.
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