99 and Manuel Arévalo, who have been individually identified and whom the State does not include in its statement (supra paras. 96.51 and 96.52 and infra para. 254). Likewise, the State’s intention to limit the victims of the instant case to the persons identified “in the final criminal and disciplinary proceedings” and to “those who prove under domestic law that they are victims” is not acceptable. In accordance with the basic principle of law regarding the international responsibility of the State according to which the States must fulfill their international treaty obligations in good faith (pacta sunt servanda), the State cannot validly resort to domestic reasons to avoid answering for the international responsibility already acknowledged before this Court.205 134. Furthermore, with regard to the violation of the right to personal liberty, there is evidence to establish that the victims were murdered after subjecting them to a state of defenselessness and inferiority: […] defenselessness is related to the proximity of the means for defense and this can be seen in the gag placed on one of the bodies, as well as in the nylon and rubber ties found on the lower limbs, clear signs of the powerlessness to which the victims were subjected before they were killed.206 135. In this regard, Leonardo Iván Cortés Novoa, who was a Judge in Mapiripán and was present at the time of the facts, stated: Every night I watched kidnapped people go by, their hands tied behind their backs and their mouth gagged, to be cruelly murdered, in the municipal slaughterhouse in Mapiripán, every night we heard the people who were being tortured and murdered screaming for help, and there are few neighbors of the slaughterhouse who remained in the town and they avoid testifying on this massacre because logically they […] know that if they talk they may be murdered.207 136. The very modus operandi of the facts in the case enables the inference that, before being executed, the victims were arbitrarily deprived of their liberty and subjected to torture or grave cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. The signs of torture and the conditions in which some next of kin and witnesses found some of the bodies reveal not only the atrocity and barbarous nature of the facts, but also that, in the least cruel of the situations, the victims were subjected to grave psychological torture when they witnessed the execution of other persons and foresaw their fatal destiny, being subjected to the conditions of terror that existed in Mapiripán between July 15 and 20, 1997. 205 See Case of the Gómez Paquiyauri Brothers, supra note 182, paras. 151 to 152. Case of Baena Ricardo et al. Competence, supra note 1879, para. 61, and Case of Juan Humberto Sánchez, supra note 184, para. 60. Likewise, see International Court of Justice, Applicability of the Obligation to Arbitrate Under Section 21 of the United Nations Headquarters Agreement of 26 June 1947, (Advisory Opinion of 26 April 1988), 1988 I.C.J., p. 57, summary available at http://www.icjcij.org/icjwww/idecisions/isummaries/ ihqasummary880426.htm; Permanent Court of International Justice, Case of the Free Zones of Upper Savoy and the District of Gex, (7 June 1932) (Series A/B) No. 46, p. 167, available at http://www.icjcij.org/icjwww/idecisions/icpij/; Permanent Court of International Justice, Treatment of Polish Nationals and Other Persons of Polish Origin or Speech in the Danzig Territory, (4 February 1932), (Series A/B) No. 44, p. 24, available at http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/idecisions/icpij/; Permanent Court of International Justice, The Greco-Bulgarian “Communities”, (31 July 1930) (Series B) No. 17, p. 32-33, available at http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/idecisions/icpij/. 206 See June 18, 2003 conviction, issued by the Second Criminal Court of the Specialized Circuit of Bogotá (file with appendixes to the application, appendix 4, page 47). 207 See statement made by a witness in confidence, rendered before the Office of the Attorney General on July 24, 1997 (file with appendixes to the brief containing pleadings and motions, appendix 29, page 3392).