## Facts

- After Chile’s 1973 military coup, Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife moved into exile in Argentina.
- In 1974, Prats and his wife were assassinated in Buenos Aires in an attack attributed to a Chilean covert apparatus operating abroad against political opponents.
- Argentine authorities investigated a broader set of acts linked to Chilean intelligence activity in Argentina, including aggravated homicide and participation in an illicit criminal association targeting exiled opponents through killings and other serious abuses.
- Enrique Lautaro Arancibia Clavel, a Chilean national alleged to be connected to Chile’s secret police (DINA), was prosecuted in Argentina along with other accused persons for aggravated homicide, illicit association, and related offenses arising from that campaign.
- During the course of these proceedings, Argentina ratified the U.N. Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.
- In this companion matter, Cause No. 15/6/93-B, a co-accused (José Octavio Zara Holger) sought Supreme Court review through a defense “recurso de hecho” (complaint) in the same broader prosecution.
- The Supreme Court considered whether its contemporaneous reasoning in the main Arancibia Clavel decision on imprescriptibility controlled the outcome in this related file.

## Issues

1. Whether the offenses charged in Cause No. 15/6/93-B—arising from a state-linked campaign against political opponents—were time-barred under domestic limitation rules or instead imprescriptible as crimes against humanity.
2. Whether applying imprescriptibility, including by reference to the later-ratified U.N. convention, violated legality and non-retroactivity limits in criminal law.
3. Whether the defense complaint seeking Supreme Court review should be granted, or dismissed, in light of the Court’s Arancibia Clavel reasoning on statutes of limitation.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court dismissed the defense “recurso de hecho” in Cause No. 15/6/93-B.
- The Court stated that the considerations set out in its Arancibia Clavel decision (issued the same date) were applicable to this file with respect to the non-applicability of statutes of limitation for the crimes being prosecuted.
- As a result, the defense could not obtain Supreme Court relief based on a statute-of-limitations theory for conduct treated as crimes against humanity in the context of the charged illicit association and related violent acts.

## Legal Principles

- Crimes against humanity are not subject to statutes of limitation where international law recognizes their imprescriptible character.
- Later treaty ratification may be used as confirmation of an already-existing rule of customary international law on imprescriptibility, rather than as a retroactive creation of criminal liability.
- Domestic limitation rules cannot be used to block prosecution of crimes treated as crimes against humanity under binding international norms.
- Participation in an illicit association formed to carry out widespread attacks on political opponents—through killings and other grave abuses carried out with state involvement or acquiescence—can be evaluated in the crimes-against-humanity framework for limitation purposes.
- When the Supreme Court has established controlling reasoning on imprescriptibility in a lead decision, it may apply that reasoning to companion proceedings and dismiss complaints that rest on time-bar arguments.

## Conclusion

In Cause No. 15/6/93-B, the Supreme Court of Argentina dismissed a co-accused’s defense complaint and applied the Arancibia Clavel holding that prosecution for dictatorship-era conduct charged as aggravated homicide and illicit association connected to crimes against humanity is not barred by statutes of limitation, and that recognizing imprescriptibility does not offend non-retroactivity where international law already treated such crimes as not subject to time limits.


Arancibia Clavel, Enrique Lautaro, and Others, re Aggravated Homicide and Illicit Association and Others, Cause No. 15/6/93-B (2004)