Amnesty Law case reaches the Supreme Court

This week the head of the Secretariat of Human Rights assured members of Congress that there was no intention on the part of the government (in its Third National Human Rights Plan, for example) to make changes to the 1979 Amnesty Law.

However, next week, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court will begin examining a lawsuit filed by the National Bar Association (OAB) that questions articles in that law dealing with crimes practiced because of, or motivated by, political reasons during the military dictatorship (1964-85). 

According to the OAB, the wording in the law extends amnesty to “absolutely undefined crimes,” including torture, which should not be subject to statutes of limitation. The 1979 law, says the OAB, also protects people who were members of the government (“agentes públicos”) and committed common crimes such as homicide, abuse of authority, unusual punishment, forced disappearance and rape against people whose only crime was that they opposed the military regime.

Meanwhile, the heads of the government’s prosecution office (procuradoria-geral da Republica) and the head of the Government Attorney Executive Office (Advocacia Geral da União) have both come out against the OAB lawsuit saying it is a rupture of a commitment the country made in 1979 and point out that there are statutes of limitation for most of the crimes.