When Appearance and When Pretrial Detention?

The judicialization of human rights violation cases must conclude with a significant number of important convictions with proper names — civilians and military personnel — responsible for what occurred. It could not be otherwise, in a country that accumulated, over a period of twenty years, nearly ten thousand disappeared and thousands upon thousands of cases of extrajudicial execution, torture, sexual violence, and innocent people imprisoned. And in this regard it is striking that, while progress is being made, we continue to face a dangerous deficit: there is not a single important case with a sentence. But here too we must strictly apply human rights standards: truth, evidence, legality, individualization, and each and every due process guarantee. That is why we consider it valid to debate when, in these types of cases, an order for preventive detention is appropriate, and when only an order for supervised release is warranted.