It would be better to just allow the government to be symbolically prosecuted for past wrongs. Politicians love to create revisionist history in which they are

It would be better to just allow the government to be symbolically prosecuted for past wrongs. Politicians love to create revisionist history in which they are the heroes for letting people be free. In cases like this the government committed human rights violations, but they believe that they have the right to do this because it was legal. Only prosecution makes it clear that the government lacks the authority to ever attack people in this way.