in criminal procedural matters” and, thus, “if a decision on the remedy of amparo has to await the preliminary hearing, which can be delayed indefinitely, […] the remedy could not be considered simple and prompt; and if the decision on it was conditioned to Mr. Brewer Carías giving himself up to his persecutors and being deprived of his liberty, international human rights law and, in particular the Convention, would not allow it to be considered an effective remedy. 30. Regarding the request for annulment, the representatives added that this can be filed by any of the parties in relation to the actions of prosecutors or judges that may have violated constitutional rights, at any stage of the proceedings, provided that this was before the final judgment was delivered and, according to article 177 of the OCCP, the judicial authority must take a decision within three days. They also referred to the case law of the Criminal Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice establishing that, under the open system established in the Code, the request for annulment “can be filed by the parties or applied, ex officio, at any stage or level of the proceedings by the person who is hearing the case.” Furthermore, the representatives established that “there is no legal restriction [indicating that the annulment] can only be decided exclusively at a precise and specific procedural opportunity, [such as] during the preliminary hearing.” They added that “whatever position is adopted with regard to the time frame that the judge has to decide a request for annulment of the actions of the prosecutor based on unconstitutionality, the conclusion is the same, because all the possibilities lead to the same conclusion: that a lapse of eight years without a decision is unreasonable and, therefore, constitutes unwarranted delay.” This is because: (i) the supervisory judge should have decided the request for annulment that was filed within the following three days, and (ii) “making a ruling on complaints of serious violations of due process subject to the uncertain time frame of the execution of a procedural action, the legal purpose of which is not to hear and decide these complaints, is unreasonable and harms the right that such violations are decided by a simple, prompt and effective remedy.” 31. They also argued that, in the case file there was no “judicial decision of any kind in which the supervisory judge has expressed the impossibility of holding the preliminary hearing owing to the absence of [Mr.] Brewer Carías.” They stated that the hearing had been postponed on several occasion for different reasons other than the presumed victim’s failure to appear. 32. The representatives added that the Commission’s decision to conclude that Article 25(1) of the Convention had not been violated was based on an erroneous interpretation of the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure and of the Venezuelan Constitution. In this regard, they argued that the case law of the Superior Court of Justice cited in the Commission’s report “is contrary to the assessment [made by the Commission] about the moment for deciding the request for annulment,” because, according to that court, “if the appeal for a declaration of nullity is filed in the intermediate stage, the judge must decide it either before the preliminary hearing, or as a result of that hearing, varying according to the constitutional harm that is alleged, and it only indicated that it would be ‘preferable’ for the decision on the request for annulment at the intermediate stage to be adopted during the preliminary hearing.” They also stated that the October 2009 judgment of the Constitutional Chamber, which was cited by the Commission, “refers to a totally different and specific situation relating to the exercise of an action for amparo”; that is, in a precise context and only in order to declare inadmissible the action amparo. They indicated that “even if this was true, it would show that domestic law ran counter to Venezuela’s obligations under the Convention and international law.” In this regard, they argued that “submitting […] the decision on nullity […] to the holding of a constitutional hearing would eliminate from the request for annulment the requirements of being simple and prompt.” They considered that 12