San José, 26 September 2024. The ruling condemns the Chilean Supreme Court’s application of the "gradual prescription" mechanism, through which it was decided to mitigate the sentences of those responsible for crimes against humanity, which paved the way to to reduced sentences and allowed many of the perpetrators to remain at large.
34 years after the end of Pinochet’s civil-military dictatorship, this ruling is a symbol and an example of the struggle for justice. Not only for the five people who were extrajudicially murdered and the 44 who were disappeared during the years of repression and persecution, but also for their families. The groups represented in this ruling are the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos, Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos de Parral.
The Court orders the State to review and/or annul the sentence reductions that would have resulted from the non-conventional application of the so-called "half statute of limitations" in the cases that were the object of examination in this judgment. This means that the sentences of those responsible for these crimes must be increased and, consequently, they must be detained.
The State must also, within a reasonable period of time, adapt its domestic legal system so that the "half statute of limitations" -or gradual prescription- of the sentence is not applicable under any terms to crimes against humanity and serious human rights violations, and until such modification is made, it must apply conventionality control.
Finally, the Court also recognised the suffering of the victims in facing the impunity of members of the Pinochet regime who, after being convicted of crimes against humanity, received disproportionately light sentences.
Karinna Fernandez, the lawyer representing the family groups in the case, said that she particularly values the Court’s recognition of the victims seeking justice and the importance of the proportionality of the sentence with respect to serious human rights violations.
Jimena Reyes, director of the Americas desk at FIDH, emphasises that it was an honour to accompany the relatives of people who were disappeared and executed during the Pinochet dictatorship. For 50 years, they have fought tirelessly for the truth to be known about the horrendous crimes and for those responsible to be punished. This sentence is one more step on the road to guaranteeing the non-repetition of the violence represented by the dictatorship. Reyes also congratulates attorneys Karinna Fernández and Magdalena Garcés, who have represented these victims for 25 years in Chilean courts and before the Inter-American system.