Gilberto Costa Reporter Agência Brasil and Carina Dourado Reporter TV Brasil

Brasília – By a vote of 7 to 2, the Brazilian Supreme Court decided that Brazil’s Amnesty Law of 1979 (Lei 6683/79) will stand as it is. The court rejected a lawsuit by the Brazilian Bar Association (“OAB”) contesting a pardon for “agents of the State” who committed common crimes (as opposed to political crimes) during the military regime (1964-85).
According to Fabio Konder Comparato, one of the jurists who drew up the OAB suit, the decision is an “international scandal.”
“This makes Brazil the only country in Latin America that continues to respect amnesty legislation of this type,” said Comparato.
In Peru and Chile, similar amnesty laws were changed after rulings in the Inter American Court of Human Rights at the Organization of American States (Argentina overturned its amnesty laws and at the moment is trying military personnel who tortured and killed people during the dictatorship there).  The OAS court is set to examine Brazil’s amnesty law on May 20. Comparato says he expects a ruling against Brazil. “This is unfortunate because it means Brazil’s intentions of occupying a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council will no longer be viable.”
As for the Supreme Court decision, Criméia Almeida, a member of the Commission of Families of the Dead and Disappeared, declared that the result was expected. “The Brazilian judiciary favors impunity,” she declared. “What this ruling does is what the last military dictator, general João Batista Figueiredo, did not have the courage to do: he let the torturers off the hook with vague language. The ruling today makes it clear that the torturers are not considered criminals in very clear language.”
On the other side of the argument, the president of the Military Club (where retired officers gather) general Gilberto Barbosa de Figueiredo (no relation to the former president), says that the Court had to do what it did. “Otherwise things would become very complicated. Any changes to the Amnesty Law would be [an unacceptable] turnaround.”

Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English
Link to article in Portuguese