17 67. The foregoing is corroborated by the statement of the agent of the State during the public hearing on February 6 and 7, 1997, who declared that on the day on which the events occurred there had been police operations in which individuals were detained and "they were even apparently placed in the trunk." XI 68. The Court now considers whether the State violated Article 4 (Right to Life). Paragraph 1 of that article establishes that: Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. 69. In its petition, the Commission considered that the forced disappearance of persons implies several violations of the Convention and, as a basis for its argument, cited the jurisprudence of this Court. With regard to the violation of Article 4, the Commission alleged that "since his detention by members of the police force in October 1990, Ernesto Rafael Castillo-Páez remains disappeared, which is grounds for presuming that he is now dead." 70. In its answer to the application, the State alleged that a disappearance does not necessarily imply the victim's death and that the possible author of the detention could not be punished for the crime of murder, "since the body in the crime is missing, a condition unanimously required by contemporary criminal doctrine." Furthermore, the State pointed out that "the actual situation of failure to determine a person's whereabouts is one thing, but that person's death is quite another, with the consequent damage to the juridical good that is life." The State also claimed that the Commission has not proven "beyond a doubt that it was police agents who deprived Ernest Rafael Castillo-Páez of his liberty, let alone made any attempt on his life." It added that mere ignorance of Mr. Castillo Páez' whereabouts could not lead to the affirmation that the State is responsible. In concluding its analysis with regard to Article 4, the State considered that the Court should have "dismissed outright this extreme of the petition which is not substantiated by any proof, but rather on a strong dose of speculation that attempts to involve the Peruvian State in events for which it has no responsibility, since it has not violated the right to life." 71. The Court deems to have been proven the violation of Article 4 of the Convention which protects the right to life, inasmuch as Mr. Castillo-Páez was arbitrarily detained by agents of the Peruvian police force; that the detention was denied by authorities who, on the contrary, hid him so that he would not be located, and his whereabouts have been unknown since that time, so that it may be concluded that the victim was deprived of his life, given the time that has elapsed since October 21, 1990 (supra, para. 43). 72. This Court has pointed out in previous rulings that the disappearance of persons violates several rights established in the Convention, including the right to life, when, as in this case, several years have passed without knowledge of the victim's whereabouts (Neira Alegría et al. Case, Judgment of January 19, 1995. Series C No. 20, para. 76; Caballero Delgado and Santana Case, Judgment of December 8, 1995. Series C No. 22, para. 56, and Blake Case, Preliminary Objections, Judgment of July 2, 1996. Series C No. 27, para. 39). 73. The State's argument that the fact that there is no knowledge of a person's whereabouts does not mean that he has been deprived of his life, since "the body in the crime ... would be missing," which it claims to be a requirement of contemporary criminal