57
c)
assuming, arguendo, that some names of alleged victims were not in
the application, that issue was definitively decided by the Court in its June 21,
2002 order; it would be pointless to revisit this matter yet again;
d)
on September 16, 2002, before the three-month time period the Court
set in that order had expired, the Commission submitted a complete list, with
the names of the children who were inmates at the Center between August
1996 and July 2001, which the Permanent Mission of Paraguay to the
Organization of American States had submitted by notes dated August 27,
2002 and September 5, 2002. In those notes the State expressly stated that
it was complying with operative paragraph 3 of the Court’s June 21, 2002
order.
Pleadings of the representatives
104. With regard to the first preliminary objection the State filed, the
representatives asked the Court to regard it as out of order on the grounds that:
a)
when the proceedings on the case got underway and at the time of the
early communications sent to the Commission, the fires had not yet occurred
and no inmate had died.
The State never raised any objection to the
assertion that the alleged victims were all inmates at the Center;
b)
there is no legal defect in the manner in which the application was
filed. The Commission provided the names of some alleged victims in its
application, and the data necessary to be able to identify the others, thereby
satisfying the requirement established in Article 33(1) of the Rules of Court;
c)
furthermore, subsequent to the State’s prompt cooperation, the
Commission delivered to the Court a new list in November 2002, in
alphabetical order, making it possible to establish the number of alleged
victims and their individual identities; and
d)
Article 33(1) of the Rules of Court provides that “when this is
possible”, the brief containing the application shall include the name and
address of the alleged victims, their next of kin or their duly accredited
representatives. That article relaxes the formalities required when filing a
complaint for inter-American litigation.
Considerations of the Court
105. This Court will examine the procedural question raised to determine whether
some defect is present in the filing of the application such that the case would only
cover the alleged victims named in the application and in the Court’s June 21, 2002
order.
106. In the amendments it has introduced to its Rules of Procedure, the Court has
determined that the brief containing the application must indicate the parties to the
case (Article 33 of the Rules of Procedure), the parties being understood to include
the duly identified alleged victims (Article 2, paragraph 23 of the Rules of
Procedure). As the Court has held in specific cases submitted to its jurisdiction, “just
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