therefore cannot be held as breached merely because the investigation does not produce a
satisfactory result.466
423. The Court would also note the State’s obligation to undertake all necessary measures
to locate the fugitive defendant Jesús Salvador Zamudio Aliaga and bring him to trial, holding
that the State has not demonstrated due diligence to find him.
424. Competent domestic authorities also must undertake or continue with the investigation
of former President Alberto Fujimori Fujimori and elucidate possible military participation in
the execution of Eduardo Nicolás Cruz Sánchez, to determine whether these hypotheses are
consistent with the facts of the case and, if so, proceed accordingly. 467
G. Right to know the truth
Arguments of the parties and of the Commission
425.
The Commission offered no arguments on this matter.
426. The representatives held that the State had violated the right to the truth for the
alleged victims and their family members “because the extrajudicial executions under
consideration in the instant case were committed in a military operation that was planned and
implemented by agents of the state, with the knowledge of the highest governmental
authorities.” They therefore believed that “only the State has possession of information
necessary to discover the truth of what happened,” but it had refrained from releasing this
information. Moreover, they said that the State had taken several actions to block the truth
from being known and to date had not identified or punished those responsible for these
serious actions. They therefore asked the Court to hold the State responsible for the alleged
violation of Articles 1(1), 8, 25 and 13 of the American Convention.
427. The State found that the Court’s consistent case law led clearly to the conclusion that
the right to the truth was “included in the right of the victim or their next of kin to obtain from
the competent organs of the State an elucidation on the facts of the violation and set the
resulting responsibilities, through the investigation and prosecution called for in Articles 8 and
25 of the Convention,” and that it was therefore not necessary for the Court to rule on an
autonomous, independent violation of the so-called right to the truth. The State cited, more
specifically, the judgment on the Blanco Romero et al. v. Venezuela case, in which the Court
did not find “that the right to the truth was an autonomous right enshrined in Articles 8, 13,
25 and 1(1) of the Convention, as the representatives were arguing”; it rejected any analogous
line of reasoning in the claims that the representatives were making in the case at hand. The
State added that this case law was reiterated in the judgment on the case of The Pueblo Bello
Massacre v. Colombia.
Considerations of the Court
428. In several cases, the Court has held that the right to know the truth “is included in the
rights of the victim or their next of kin to obtain from the competent organs of the State an
elucidation on the facts of the violation and corresponding responsibilities, through the
Cf. Case of Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras. Merits, supra, para. 177; Case of Caballero Delgado y Santana
v. Colombia. Merits. Judgment of December 8, 1995. Series C No. 22, para. 58, and Case of Castillo González et al.
v. Venezuela. Merits. Judgment of November 27, 2012. Series C No. 256, para. 153.
466
Cf. Case of the Afro-descendant communities displaced from the Cacarica River Basin (Operation Genesis)
v. Colombia, supra, para. 378.
467
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