365. In Chapter IV of this Judgment the Court established that the State had acknowledged its international responsibility for the violation of Articles 8(1) and 25(1) of the Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) of this instrument, to the detriment of “the next of kin of Marino López Mena, who were duly identified and individualized, as well as of the victims of forced displacement determined by the Court,” owing to the violation of a reasonable time, without it having been possible, to date, to identify and punish the masterminds and perpetrators of the said offenses. The dispute remained with regard to the State’s responsibility for the alleged violation of the other rights that the representatives and the Commission alleged had been violated (supra para. 22). 366. Despite the foregoing, the State indicated that the reasonable time for an investigation cannot be examined in abstract, but rather case by case, and indicated that, although the criminal investigations had been conducted diligently and responsibly, no results had been obtained because of the complexity of the events under investigation, owing to the modus operandi of the illegal organizations that instigated the events, the vulnerable conditions of the population that was the victim of those events, and the difficulty for the judicial officials to access the area where the events occurred. 367. In addition, in its brief of August 13, 2013, with observations on the evidence forwarded by the Prosecutor General’s Office, the State indicated, inter alia, that “the documentation provided by the Prosecutor General’s Office reveals the significant efforts and progress made in the administration of justice, as well as Colombia’s commitment to seek the truth in this case,” and that the State “has been evaluating the functioning of the system of criminal investigation in Colombia […] in order to better combat organized crime; to obtain a better knowledge of the context of the armed conflict in Colombia, so as to improve the approach to transitional justice procedures; to respond to the demands of civil society and, in general, to make the administration of justice more effective.” It stressed that, as a result of the above, it had recently created the National Analysis and Context Unit as an “instrument of criminal policy focused on dealing mainly with phenomena of organized crime, by using tools to analyze crimes and create contexts, in order to coordinate the isolated information that is currently in different units of the Prosecution Service.”614 B. Considerations of the Court 368. As considered in this Judgment (supra Chapter IV), the State’s partial acknowledgement of responsibility in relation to the alleged violations of the rights recognized in Articles 8 and 25 of the Convention makes a positive contribution to the evolution of these proceedings, to the application of the principles that inspire the American Convention, and to the conduct that States are obliged to assume in this area. However, this acknowledgement must be related to the nature and severity of the alleged violations, the demands and interest of justice, the particular circumstances of the specific case, and whether it will allow the truth of what happened to be determined.615 369. In this chapter, and owing to the subsisting dispute (supra para. 22), the Court will now decide whether the State has incurred in violations of the rights established in Articles 8(1) and 25(1) of the Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) of this instrument and, to this end, it will examine the different domestic investigations and criminal proceedings that were opened based on the events of this case. 614 The State also indicated that this Unit has been organized in nine groups so that each one works on logical lines of investigation that respond to the country’s different problems. It also indicated that one of these groups has been called “Investigation group on the violence that occurred in the Urabá region.” 615 Cf. Case of Manuel Cepeda Vargas v. Colombia, para. 17, and Case of the Santo Domingo Massacre v. Colombia. Preliminary objections, merits and reparations, para. 151. 119

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