-24that she considered it “quite a large amount.” 7. Miguel Uvence Argueta Umaña, prosecutor responsible for the case of Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano Cruz Since 1998 he has been Head of the Private Patrimony Unit of the Chalatenango Prosecutor’s office. He took on the case of the Serrano Cruz children in January 2002 as the special prosecutor; however, he took the first measures in October 2003. Before the witness, many other prosecutors had been in charge of the investigation of this case, which was normal. When he began to investigate the case, the witness was “focusing” on the Armed Forces records because he thought he would be able to find important information there. However, around October 2003, the Deputy Ombudsman told him that he should visit the place where the Serrano Cruz family lived in 1982 and talk to the people. He began to interview people living in the area where the family lived, which is a rural area, because “it was necessary to find some clue” about the possible whereabouts of the Serrano Cruz girls, and also to find out whether the children were known. He interviewed four witnesses who stated that they knew the Serrano Cruz family and lived near to them, but who did not know Ernestina and Erlinda. He believed what they told him. He also decided to interview Esperanza Franco Orellana again; in a statement made previously, she had declared that, when she was in La Sierpe with her mother, the latter had told her that she had seen María Victoria Cruz Franco’s daughters descend from a helicopter. When the witness re-interviewed Mrs. Franco Orellana, she told him that she had lied in her previous statement, because Mrs. Cruz Franco had asked her to say that she had seen the children get into a Red Cross vehicle, but the truth was that she did not know the Serrano Cruz girls. The day after this interview, the investigators who accompanied the witness took Mrs. Franco Orellana to the court to give testimony. Accompanied by one of the State’s representatives in the proceeding before the Court, he visited Esperanza Franco Orellana to ask her to accompany them to San José, Costa Rica, to give testimony before the Court. Mrs. Franco Orellana told them that she would think about it and that one of her children was ill and she had a problem because she had not been given the title deeds to her house. They told her that they could coordinate with the authorities to provide medical care to her son in a public hospital and, regarding the legal problem, they told her that she should seek the aid of the Ombudsman, but they did not give her any money to solve these problems. The witness specified the amount of money that the State gave to the State’s representative before the Court, to Mrs. Franco Orellana and to himself, as traveling expenses to appear before the Court. He did not interview any member of the Serrano Cruz family because “they were not well disposed towards the prosecutor”; it was a precaution that had to be taken because the case was before the Inter-American Court. He does not know the members of the Serrano Cruz family; he never spoke to them. In addition, he did not interview them because “they had been interviewed several times,” and there were inconsistencies in the statements made by the children’s mother, who had not described the girls.