DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE AD HOC ALEJANDRO MONTIEL ARGÜELLO 1) I have dissented from the operative paragraphs of this judgment declaring that the State of El Salvador has violated Articles 8 and 25 of the American Convention on Human Rights. 2) The Court has interpreted the encompasses judicial guarantees in proceedings, but also establishes the may entail its responsibility because it former provision in the sense that it not only favor of the accused or the parties to the State’s obligation to investigate any fact that constitutes the violation of a human right. 3) Clarifying this obligation, in its initial judgments on merits the Court stated that: “An investigation must have an objective and be assumed by the State as its own legal duty, not as a step taken by private interests that depends upon the initiative of the victim or his family or upon their offer of proof, without an effective search for the truth by the Government…” (Velásquez Rodríguez case. Judgment of July 29, 1988, para. 177 and Godínez Cruz case. Judgment of January 20, 1989, para. 198). 4) This does not mean that examination of the conduct of the victim or his next of kin that may obstruct or impede, deliberately or not, the State’s action should be totally dispensed with when assessing how the State has complied with its obligation to investigate. Naturally, the circumstances of each case must be taken into consideration; particularly, whether it occurred in a populated or isolated place, whether many similar cases occurred at the same time that also require the attention of the authorities, whether the fact occurred recently or in the past, etc. 5) In the instant case, it was stated that the disappearances of the Serrano Cruz sisters occurred on June 2, 1982, and the fact was not reported to the Chalatenango Trial Court by the alleged victims’ mother until April 30, 1993, that is 11 years later. She made a second statement before the Court and, in his brief with final arguments, the State’s Agent in this case drew attention to seven contradictions between the two statements; she then filed a petition for habeas corpus in which the Agent has identified six more contradictions and, finally, before she died, she recorded a statement in which there are a further ten contradictions. It should be mentioned that there is not one witness to the Army’s capture of the children, because one of their sisters merely stated that they were hidden in the undergrowth and she heard members of the Army say they had found two children. This statement differs from the mother’s statement. Regarding the statement made by María Esperanza Franco Orellana that she had seen the children descending from an Army helicopter and being handed over to the Red Cross, in her statement before the Court, she said that she had seen nothing and, besides, if her first statement is accepted, this would free the State from responsibility, because the Army would have delivered the children to the Red Cross, even though the latter has not been able to provide any information in this respect. 6) I do not consider it necessary to start examining all the evidence submitted in this case, most of which refers to matters that throw no light on the alleged disappearance, because I believe that, in view of what I have stated in the preceding paragraphs, the State cannot be accused of failing to comply with the obligation to