i. the leader of the organization, Ismael Solorio, had received threats. The Commission was aware that on October 15, 2012 a meeting took place between leaders of “El Barzón”, including Mr. Solorio and Mrs. Luz Estela Castro, with the Secretary General of Government, who days earlier had made public statements about Mrs. Castro in the terms mentioned previously (supra Having Seen 6(b)(ii)); ii. at said meeting, Mrs. Luz Estela Castro assumed a leadership role and expressed the need to protect the leaders of “El Barzón” and stated the following: “I offer as witnesses all the organizations present here, and I want to say that if the State Government does not protect the leaders of El Barzón, they will be killed”; iii. seven days after the meeting, on October 22, 2012, Ismael Solorio Urrutia and his wife Marta Manuela Solís Contreras were murdered, and iv. press reports referring to these killings, published in the newspapers “El Proceso” and “Yancuic” indicate that in the weeks prior to these events, the leaders of “El Barzón” were victims of a smear campaign in the media. The press reports also mention the similarity between the vulnerable situation in which these murdered leaders found themselves and the situation of Mrs. Luz Estela Castro Rodríguez, both in her capacity as a lawyer of the organization to which the murdered defenders belonged, and as director of CEDHEM with a smear campaign of a similar nature to that suffered by the members of “El Barzón”. 7. The legal arguments used by the Commission to base its request for provisional measures, which stated that: a) the alleged facts recounted, taken as a whole and assessed in light of the serious context of violence against human rights defenders in the State of Chihuahua, suggest, under the prima facie standard of appreciation, that Mrs. Luz Estela Castro Rodríguez is in a situation of extreme risk as a consequence of her numerous activities as a human rights defender of two civil society organizations, and her defense of other human rights defenders who are at risk; b) the State has not implemented effective, sustained and individualized protection measures in response to the situation of risk faced by the proposed beneficiary. It has ordered some measures, whose shortcomings have been denounced by Mrs. Luz Estela Castro Rodríguez, who has repeatedly requested an individualized risk assessment in order to design measures of protection appropriate to her specific situation, and c) the situation of risk faced by Luz Estela Castro Rodríguez has increased. Among her many activities as a human rights defender, she has participated in the investigations related to the death of Mrs. Marisela Escobedo, another human rights defender of similar causes to those represented by Mrs. Castro Rodríguez. In the context of that participation, Luz Estela Castro Rodríguez made a public appeal for transparency in announcing the results of the investigations which, in her opinion, were contradictory and required an appropriate response by the Prosecutor’s Office, both to family members and to 4

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