Crímenes internacionales y la imprescriptibilidad de la acción penal y civil: Referencia al caso Chileno

Abstract

After the Second World War a real international corpus iuris has been developed regarding international crimes. Common conscience of the mankind does not tolerate inhuman acts or the barbarie anymore. As of this common conscience it has raised generally accepted principles which can be found at the very base of what is known as International Criminal Law. One of these well established principles is the imprescriptibility of international crimes. In these cases, the imprescriptibility of the criminal action does not raise any doubt but imprescriptibility of the civil action derived from international crimes indeed is controversial. The coherence and integrality criteria allow us to conclude that both criminal and civil actions enjoy the imprescriptibility status in the case of international crimes. © 2009 Universidad de Talca, Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales.