human rights law and, in particular the Convention, would not allow it to be considered an effective remedy.” 18. In addition, the representatives argued, with regard to the presumed victim’s absence from the preliminary hearing, that this did not prevent deciding the request for annulment, considering that the right of the accused not to be tried in absentia is “a procedural guarantee that must always be understood in favor of the accused and never against him.” They added that “the procedural actions that cannot be conducted without the presence [of the presumed victim] are those that relate to his trial, which include the preliminary hearing and the oral and public hearing [and this] does not preclude conducting numerous other judicial actions that do not entail trying him in absentia, [such as] the request for the annulment of all the proceedings to date.” Based on article 327 and the following articles of the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure, they repeated that the request for annulment owing to the violation of procedural guarantees must be decided without the need to hold the said hearing and without requiring the presence of the accused. 19. They also argued that, in the case file, there is no “judicial decision or order 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.” 20. The representatives concluded that: (i) the context of the alleged structural situation of the provisional nature of judges and prosecutors in Venezuela, as well as “[t]he reiterated and persistent violation of the right to an independent and impartial judge in the proceedings against Mr. Brewer Carías, which the State has not denied, prove that the [presumed] victim was denied due process of law, which constitutes the first exception to the requirement of the exhaustion of domestic remedies before having recourse to the international protection of human rights (Art. 46(2)(a) [of the Convention])”; (ii) “[t]he persistent and arbitrary refusal of the Public Prosecution Service and of the different judges who have heard the criminal case instituted against [Mr.] Brewer Carías to admit and to process the evidence and remedies requested by the victim’s lawyers in order to defend him adequately in the terms of Article 8 of the Convention, constitutes the second exception to the requirement of the exhaustion of domestic remedies before having recourse to the international protection of human rights (Art. 46(2)(b) [of the Convention]),” and (iii) “[t]he circumstance that the request for the annulment of all the proceedings, filed on November 8, 2005, has not been decided to date, constitutes the unwarranted delay and, thus, the third exception to the requirement of the exhaustion of domestic remedies before having recourse to the international protection of human rights (Art. 46(2)(c)).” 21. Furthermore, the case file before the Venezuela courts in this case reveals that the defense filed two briefs in which they requested the annulment of the proceedings. 4 The first on October 4, 2005, on the grounds that: “the Prosecutor General had published a book entitled ‘Abril comienza en octubre,’” in which he referred to certain statements provided by 4 In the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure nullities are established in Chapter II, articles 190 and 191 (file of annexes to the answering brief, folio 20631). Article 190. Principle: the proceedings conducted that contravene or disregard the forms and conditions established in this Code, the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the law, and international treaties, conventions and agreement signed by the Republic may not be taken into consideration in order to provide grounds for a judicial decision, unless the defect has been rectified and authenticated. Article 191. Absolute nullities: absolute nullities shall be considered those concerning the intervention, assistance and representation of the accused in the cases and forms that this Code establishes, or those that entail non-observance or violation of fundamental rights and guarantees established in this Code, the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the law, and international treaties, conventions and agreement signed by the Republic. 4