violation of international humanitarian law and accordingly, a war crime.” They added that “war crimes can never be considered military transgressions, and therefore cannot be brought before the military jurisdiction.” Along the same lines, the representatives concluded that the investigations in the military jurisdiction had not been limited to discovering whether the operation had been conducted as planned, but that “this process was clearly directed toward investigating the execution” of, among others, Víctor Salomón Peceros Pedraza and Herma Luz Meléndez Cueva. 390. The State disagreed with the arguments of the Commission and the representatives that family members had been denied access to the proceedings in the military courts. It had been fully demonstrated, according to the State, that the family members of the alleged victims had had access to the process in the military courts and were able to avail themselves of the remedies provided by that jurisdiction. It held, in this regard, that the laws in effect at the time did allow the family members of victims to be present in the military criminal proceedings, and the case file of the trial “contains lengthy documentation demonstrating that anyone who had wanted to serve as a plaintiff had so requested and their petitions had been granted,” under the terms of legislation in effect at the time. The State denied that the proceedings in the military courts had been secret. 391. The State further emphasized that the case of Eduardo Nicolás Cruz Sánchez had never been brought before the military courts, “as the alleged crime had been investigated from the beginning by the ordinary courts.” The State therefore held that “any argument to the effect that the military courts were used to ‘cover up’ alleged criminal acts had absolutely no legal, […] political or anthropological basis,” since in the instant case, “the ordinary courts [were] never blocked or impeded from taking jurisdiction over the case, nor [was] any effort made to try civilians in the military courts.” 392. The State explained that “the military court trial of the commandos for alleged conduct directly related to the operation [was] permissible according to all international standards and [did] not breach judicial guarantees for the following reasons: (i) the complexity of the case from the perspective of the political context in which the facts occurred; (ii) this case unfolded in a legal context of transition toward a post-conflict state that had not yet been fully consolidated, as was evident from the continuing terrorist actions by Shining Path in Huallaga; (iii) the family members of the alleged victims had access to the proceedings in the military courts, despite arguments to the contrary by the Commission and the representatives of the alleged victims, and (iv) the domestic trials were divided into two phases following the ruling of the Supreme Court of the State of Peru, but the Cruz Sánchez case, as the case file clearly demonstrates, never entered the military jurisdiction.” 393. The State also stressed that “the investigation and trial, as has been fully demonstrated, were conducted according to the standards of due process, and the jurisdictional dispute was settled impartially the Supreme Court, which handed down a duly reasoned judgment on April 5, 2004.” The State went on to say, “bearing in mind that this was a military operation with implications for state security, the constitutional system guarantees that law enforcement bodies can perform their duties, [and therefore] the court best able to guarantee an impartial trial was the military jurisdiction, […] as this would prevent the possibility that judges who were ideologically biased or under pressure by various organizations might produce political judgments of such events.” 394. The State added that there was no evidence indicating that the alleged victims and their rights might have been breached in the military criminal trial, so as to infer that this standard had been violated. The State also addressed the conduct of the military judges and prosecutors, maintaining that the military justice system had operated within the legal