Nada além da verdade? a consolidação do direito à verdade e seu exercício por comissões e tribunais

Abstract

The dissertation exposes the consolidation of the right to truth by international law and the complementarity of truth commissions and tribunals, both transitional justice mechanisms, as the combination that better confers its aplicability. First, the work claims that transition to and consolidation of democracy should provide accountability for past abuses, what became possible by the changes that have impacted international law after the World War II. The exceptional development of international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law is explored, considered the idea of responsability. The dissertation takes care of the development of the right to truth within the United Nations Organization and the human rights regional systems, and its status of imperative or peremptory norm, as well the obstacles for its exercise in the case of amnesties and other similar measures as statute of limitation, military justice and doble jeopardy (res judicata). The truth that results from truth commissions and tribunais its potentialities and limits are here conceived as knowledge e acknowledgment of what occured. The work also considers aspects as the independence and impartiality of truth commissions, its powers and the reach of its conclusions and recommendations. On the other hand, considering the truth to be obtained by tribunals, the dissertation priviledges the analysis of criminal procedure, in the sense that a criminal veridict implies due process. The imperativity of the right to truth is also demonstrated by the participation of victims in the criminal procedure and the admission of guilty by the accused both celebrated by the Statute of Rome. The dissertation also covers some sceneries of complementarity between truth commissions and tribunals, making use of the case of Chile, Peru, Sierra Leone and Kenya, cases that suffered significant impact by international law, considered the influence of universal jurisdiction or the impact of international jurisdiction. The Brazilian case, at the end, does not fit precisely in any of these sceneries. Its caracterization as an open dialogue assumes that the country has come face to face with the debate of complementarity the recent approval of the National Truth Commission has to live together with the apparent conflict between two decisions held in 2010: the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the 1979 Amnesty Law and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the Araguaia Case that considered null and void the parts of the law that obstacle the criminal persecution of the ones responsible -, and has opportunity to demonstrate that time has not moderated the obligations to which Brasil has compromised with in the international arena.