8. On September 7, 1999, the State was sent the petitioners’ comments on its reply of August 19. On October 15, the State submitted a new document containing information. That document was forwarded by the Commission to the petitioners on October 28, 1999. 9. On July 28, 2000, the IACHR put itself at the disposal of the parties with a view to reaching a friendly settlement. On March 2, 2001, the Commission held a meeting at its headquarters in order for the parties to discuss the terms of a possible friendly settlement. 10. On October 13, 2000, during the Commission’s 108th session, the petitioners signed a document setting the foundations for a friendly settlement agreement that they pledged to draw up. 11. On April 30, 2001, the petitioners informed the IACHR about their intention to withdraw from the friendly settlement procedure undertook with the State of Guatemala. III. POSITIONS OF THE PARTIES A. Petitioners 12. The petitioners claim that on October 6, 1981, at around 1:30 p.m., three men, armed with automatic pistols, entered the home of the Molina Theissen family. The men handcuffed Marco Antonio Molina Theissen, who at that time was 14 years old, tied him to the arm of a chair, and gagged him with a strip of masking tape. They stayed in the house for about 40 minutes before leaving in a pick up truck taking the boy, who still was handcuffed and gagged. Members of the family wrote down the truck’s license plate that according to the investigations carried out by the alleged victim’s parents at the General Directorate of Internal Revenue and the General Directorate of the National Police was identified as belonging to a Guatemalan army vehicle. To date the whereabouts of Marco Antonio Molina Theissen remains unknown. 13. The petitioners suggest that the abduction of Marco Antonio Molina Theissen was carried out as a retaliation after his sister, Emma Guadalupe, a former student leader, managed to escape from the hands of the army. Some days before the kidnapping of Marco Antonio Molina Theissen, his sister had been imprisoned for nine days in which she was interrogated, tortured, and raped, before she could escape. Her brother Marco Antonio was abducted the day after she escaped. 14. The petitioners report that the alleged victim’s family filed several habeas corpus with the judiciary. The first one was lodged on the day of the kidnapping, October 6, 1981; another on June 23, 1997;2 and the last one on August 12.3 They also claim that they filed two special investigation procedures, but none of them lead to a positive result. The first special procedure was lodged on January 14, 1998,4 and the second one on February 5 of the same year. The petitioners state that the failure of these remedies and the State’s unwillingness to investigate the disappearance constitute grounds for resorting to the exception to the rule of the previous exhaustion of domestic remedies, in as much as those remedies have proved to be ineffective. 15. Regarding the rights that the petitioners claimed have been violated, they note that Marco Antonio Molina Theissen was last seen in the hands of State agents and so it can be assumed that his life was taken arbitrarily and illegally, breaching Article 4 of the Convention. They allege that the boy’s forced disappearance constitutes a violation of his right to human treatment, and that the circumstances in which the alleged victim was detained, handcuffed, and gagged, all together with the fact that torture was a common practice in Guatemala at 2 Appendix to the petition, submitted on September 14, 1998. Recorded as received by the clerk of the Supreme Court on July 9, 1997. 3 Appendix to the petition, submitted on September 14, 1998. Recorded as received by the clerk of the Supreme Court on August 11, 1997. 4 Appendix to the petition, submitted on September 14, 1998. Recorded as received by the clerk of the Supreme Court on January 20, 1998. 2