From Combatant to Judicial Appearant. The Troubled Transition from Armed Conflict to Transitional Justice

Transitional justice always stumbles over the same stone, the reiteration of heroic, euphemistic, lying, and amnesiac narratives of those appearing. Then, it would be necessary to ask whether transitional justice has not lost sight of the difficult and conflictive transition faced by those former combatants. This article analyzes the ideological, moral, emotional, and relational factors that within conflict combine in the redefinition of the identity of those who face the transition from armed conflict to transitional justice, delving into the incidence of cognitive dissonance, role reversal and the breakdown of the group bond.