Many domestic courts, when prosecuting atrocities committed in their dictatorial or warring past, have been facing a real dilemma: whether to classify the facts as ordinary crimes, foreseen by the domestic legislation prior to the facts and therefore consistent with the principles of legality and non-retroactivity, or as international crimes, which do not grant the same compatibility but allow to overcome the obstacles to prosecution imposed by statutory limitations and amnesties. The paper focuses on an interpretative method developed by several Latin American tribunals to overcome this impasse, by means of a combined application of the two criminal categories. Although this ‘dual classification of facts’ apparently solves the dilemma, it is flawed from both a methodological and substantive perspective. After scrutinising these problematic issues, the paper analyses some alternative interpretative proposals that may also allow to avoid impunity, but without impinging on fundamental principles of modern criminal law systems.

许多国内法院在起诉其过去独裁或战争时期的暴行时，一直面临着一个现实的困境：是否将事实归为普通犯罪，由国内立法先于事实预见，因此符合合法性和非正当性原则。 - 追溯性，或作为国际罪行，不给予相同的兼容性，但允许克服法定时效和大赦对起诉施加的障碍。本文重点介绍了几个拉丁美洲法庭为克服这一僵局而开发的解释方法。，通过两个犯罪类别的结合应用。这种“事实的双重分类”虽然表面上解决了这个困境，但从方法论和实体的角度来看都存在缺陷。在仔细研究了这些有问题的问题之后，本文分析了一些替代性的解释性建议，这些建议也可以避免有罪不罚，但不会影响现代刑法制度的基本原则。