The Dual Treatment of Political Offenses Within the Framework of Human Rights

In general, the expression political offense means every harmful act against the domestic or international public order and against national security. However, there is a double treatment for this behavior in the Brazilian system. On one hand, the expression was used especially during the era of Brazilian authoritarian regimes to designate any activity against the public order policy and national security. In these cases, the political nature of the offense served to justify the loss of rights and guarantees, such as the prohibition of habeas corpus, the trial of civilians by military personnel and the aggravation of penalties. On the other, the characterization of a crime as a political may prevent the extradition of foreigners by granting them the possibility of obtaining asylum in the country, which hinders the criminal persecution action from the other State. Hence, this paper aims to demonstrate this duplicity of treatment of political offenses in Brazilian law, as well as the criteria used for this categorization. The methodology consists of a historical analysis of the aforementioned concept and presents the current state of the art as to its uses in Brazil. In order to achieve our purposes, we have employed as sources the national and international norms that display the category political offense and their empiric interpretation in the rulings of the Brazilian Supreme Court, since the Vargas Era until today.