Pravna rehabilitacija žrtava političke represije
Legal rehabilitation of victims of political repression

Summary/Abstract: Today when by 'history is working on itself', the stupidity is revealed or the ideology which was the basis for conviction is overcame, the post authoritarian power owes legal rehabilitation to the victims of political repression. Des¬pite moral rehabilitation which is, in a basic matter, more efficient than the legal and, despite joint action of both types of rehabilitation, by which the most can be achieved, the victim of political history anyhow for all times remains a victim. In a narrow sense, the legal rehabilitation denotes measures which are undertaken for abolishing a sentence, namely a penalty. The motive for this is three emerging forms of political non-law, characteristic to authoritarian regimes: political legislation, political judiciary and conviction outside any regulated procedure. Legal rehabilitation removes from the victim a sign of conviction. In a wider sense, the legal rehabilitation entails measures for easing the consequences of conviction, namely a penalty (return of paid penalty, confiscated property, right to damages for damaged health, interrupted career etc). Both types of legal rehabilitation denote a difference between law and non-law in authoritarian and democratic systems and affirm the need for the resistance of human rig¬hts against politics and ideology. Legal rehabilitation is clearly different from most similar legal institutions (erasing of sentence, right to damages in accordance with law on contracts and torts). By its scope of application and outcome the legal rehabilitation is irreplaceable with other means of legal overcoming of the past (amnesty, legal annulment of judgments, repetition of procedure, extra legal examination, right to damages for unjustified sentence). In Serbia, legal rehabilitation represents the most neglected form of legal surmounting of past (and four years after the October 2000 there is not even a draft law of the Government). By enumerating reasons why this deficit is impossible to justify, the final part of the article enumerates reasons which explain this neglect of legal rehabilitation.

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