-62impunity and the pattern of violence surrounding such disappearances,” the Ombudsman’s Office made a detailed analysis of impunity in the case of the Serrano Cruz sisters. 103. In his testimony in the public hearing before this Court (supra para. 36), the prosecutor demonstrated that he had not maintained his impartiality in the investigation and that the line of investigation in the criminal proceedings was not totally separate from the State’s defense before the Inter-American Court. In this regard, the prosecutor explained that he took the decision not to interview any of the alleged victims’ direct next of kin, because “it was a necessary precaution, since the case had already been filed before the Inter-American Court” and because, in his opinion, the mother and one of the sisters of the alleged victims “were not well disposed towards the prosecutor”; albeit, he accepted that he did not know them. Another action that has caught the Court’s attention is that, when the State’s Agent visited Ms. Franco Orellana to ask her to appear before the Inter-American Court to testify, he did so accompanied by the prosecutor responsible for the investigation before the Chalatenango Trial Court, which shows that the latter did not maintain his independence in his investigative functions in the criminal proceedings, but became involved in the task of the State’s Agent defending El Salvador in the international proceedings. Also, the prosecutor acknowledged during the public hearing before the Court that he had not requested the judge to order the pending judicial inspections on military premises, because he “ha[d] not taken any actions recently owing to [his] workload” (supra para. 36). However, this prosecutor urged the judge to order expert appraisals to verify the authenticity of the baptismal records of the alleged victims and even requested that the date of these appraisals be advanced “as the audience before the Inter-American Court was imminent.” In this regard, in its decision of September 2, 2004 (supra para. 48(5)), the Ombudsman’s Office stated that: […] it is worth noting that the prosecutor, formally (in a written request), acknowledged that his motive or interest in moving the procedure forward promptly responded to the need to present it to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which makes it clear that his activity is not focused on investigating the crime itself, or obtaining justice for the victims, but rather on defending the Salvadoran State, which is on trial before the Inter-American Court. 104. As has been shown, while the case was being processed before the InterAmerican Court, the criminal investigation underway before the Chalatenango Trial Court was directed principally at contributing to the State’s defense in the international proceedings before the Court and not to investigating the reported facts in the criminal proceedings. 105. Based on the foregoing analysis, the Court has established that, in both the proceedings before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice and the proceedings before the Chalatenango Trial Court, there have been serious omissions in gathering evidence owing to the failure of the prosecutors to request and the judges to order the necessary probative measures to determine what happened to Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano Cruz, discover their whereabouts and investigate and punish those responsible. The Court understands that, for different reasons, this is a complex case; this means that the judicial authorities should have taken into account the characteristics of the reported facts and the situation of armed conflict in the country at the time when the facts under investigation allegedly occurred. However, the Court finds that the investigations were not carried out with the efficiency that the case warranted and that the judges did not fulfill their