presenting any observations it deemed pertinent. The State forwarded the corresponding observations on October 30, 2013. III COMPETENCE 14. The Court is competent to hear this case, pursuant to Article 62(3) of the American Convention, because Peru ratified the American Convention on July 28, 1978, and accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court on January 21, 1981. Furthermore, Peru deposited the instrument ratifying the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons on February 13, 2002, and it entered into force for the State on March 15, 2002, in accordance with Article XX of that instrument. Regarding the competence ratione temporis of the Court as regards the application of the latter instrument to the facts of this case, this will be analyzed in the chapter on preliminary objections (infra paras. 27 to 35). IV PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS 15. The State filed two preliminary objections: alleged failure to comply with the six-month period for lodging the initial petition, and the alleged lack of competence ratione temporis of the Inter-American Court with regard to the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons. Bearing in mind that, like any organ with jurisdictional functions, the Court has the power inherent in its attributes to determine the scope of its own competence (compétence de la compétence/ Kompetenz-Kompetenz), 8 this Court will analyze the preliminary objections that were filed in the order in which they were presented. A. Preliminary objection of alleged failure to comply with the six-month period for lodging the initial petition A.1. Arguments of the parties and of the Commission 16. The State asked the Court to verify the legality of Admissibility Report No. 76/10 and conclude that the Commission should have declared the petition inadmissible, because its presentation was time-barred according to Articles 46(1)(b) of the American Convention and 35(1) of the Commission’s Rules of Procedure in force at the time. In this regard, it explained that, in its observations of February 10, 1998, it had requested that the petition be declared inadmissible; thus, it had filed this preliminary objection at the proper time, during the admissibility stage of the proceedings before the Commission. The State argued that the initial petition had been “lodged one year and one month after the petitioner was notified of the final jurisdictional decision that archived the proceedings on the events that have been denounced, that is on September 25, 1996, and not in June 1997, as the petitioner had indicated in paragraph 14 of his brief with the initial petition.” Consequently, based on the date of notification of the decision to dismiss the case that ended the proceedings, and the date the initial petition was lodged before the Commission, “it [can be] observed that the six-month time frame for lodging a communication under the system of individual petitions was long expired,” because this period had expired at the end of May 1997. Added to this, the State affirmed that “if, according to the representatives, the military court was 8 Cf. Case of Ivcher Bronstein v. Peru. Competence. Judgment of September 24, 1999. Series C No. 54, para. 78, and Case of García Lucero et al. v. Chile. Preliminary objection, merits and reparations. Judgment of August 28, 2013. Series C No. 267, para. 24. 8