been manufactured by the Plumavit Factory, the judge initiated the judicial proceedings. According to the petition, the police hid the E.S.P.O.L. analysis in order to implicate the petitioner and his co-workers in the crime. 23. On November 15, 1997 the petitioner’s automobile was seized by the police, despite the fact that it had nothing to do with the suspected crime, and allegedly it has been dismantled. His house, which he had purchased on credit, in a middle-class neighborhood, had to be sold by his relatives due to his illegal detention and the inability of his family to keep up the payments with no income coming in, at a loss of 50% of its value. In addition, the El Niño phenomenon caused a flood in the little town in which he was living, destroying the furniture and other goods in the house, which his family had already vacated. 24. The factory in which the petitioner was employed was illegally searched by the police and a special dog was brought in that was trained to track down drugs by scent. No remains of drugs were found anywhere. No evidence tied Mr. Lapo to the crime. Despite that crucial fact, the petitioner states that Mr. Lapo was kept in detention and the judicial proceedings were initiated. Pursuant to Article 231 of the Ecuadorian Code of Criminal Procedure, the investigative stage of the proceedings may not take more than 60 days. In this case, it continued for nine months and fifteen days. 25. Mr. Lapo was kept in detention for one year, six months and eleven days in the Centro de Rehabilitación Social de Guayaquil. He had been arrested on November 15, 1997 without an arrest warrant, he was never informed of the reasons for his detention, he was held incommunicado for five days, he did not have the assistance of a defense lawyer and he was not charged for twentythree days. He was finally released when the Superior Court of Guayaquil “ratified” the opinion of the Twelfth Criminal Prosecutor of Guayas to “definitively dismiss” the charges against him. Despite the dismissal, they refused to return the automobile and sent the judgment to the Attorney General’s office where it has been paralyzed for months. 26. Based on the foregoing, the petitioner alleges that the State has committed the following violations of the American Convention with regard to Mr. Fredy Lapo Iñiguez: a) violation of Article 7(2) because he was detained without a judicial arrest warrant; b) violation of Article 7(3), because he was subject to arbitrary imprisonment for a year, six months and eleven days for a crime which he did not commit; and c) violation of Article 7(5), because the State did not comply with the time periods established by law. C. Position of the State 1. Response of the State to Mr. Chaparro, the first petitioner 27. The State only replied once to Mr. Chaparro’s petition and that was on March 22, 1999, at which time it attached the position of the Attorney General’s office, dated March 17, 1999. The position of the Attorney General was that Petition 12.091 does not comply with the admissibility requirements set forth in Article 46 of the American Convention because Mr. Chaparro failed to exhaust domestic remedies before filing a petition with the Commission. In the view of the State the internal remedies in the case have not been exhausted. 28. In accordance with the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court, the party that alleges failure to exhaust domestic remedies is obliged to set forth the remedies that must be exhausted and to indicate their efficacy. In this context, the State noted that the criminal proceedings pending before the Criminal Court of Judge Guadalupe Manrique Rossi have been proceeding normally. These proceedings have allowed the intervention of specialized experts who have issued reports that have been favorable to the petitioner, so much so that the representative of the Public Ministry has issued his opinion in which he abstains from bringing charges against Mr. Chaparro. Whether these proceedings turn out to be favorable or not to Mr. Chaparro, does not