War councils and transitional justice

After the coup d’état of September 11th, 1973, the dictatorship set up War Councils in which it tried officials of the Popular Unity government, as members of leftist parties. Forty-eight years after the events, the dictatorship’s Councils of War are being annulled by the Supreme Court. On October 3, 2016, the highest court annulled the decision of the Council of War role 1-1973, a court that had condemned a group of constitutionalist airmen. By issuing this annulment sentence, the highest court complied with the Inter-American Court’s ruling in the case of Omar Maldonado and others vs. Chile, and pointed out that the Appeal for Review was the procedural means of annulling these sentences. Since that first ruling, 30 judgments have been handed down annulling these Councils of War. This new jurisprudence is part of the transitional justice process underway in Chile that provides a response to the human rights violations committed during the dictatorship.