5 22. The petitioners reported that on December 17, 1998, upon discovering what was happening to his son, Mr. Gustavo Amílcar Tobar Fajardo filed an appeal for review before the Juvenile Court of First Instance of the Department of Escuintla, in which he alleged that he had not been notified of the decisions handed down in the abandonment proceedings and denounced that his son was a victim of an international network that sold children, led by an attorney closely tied to the home “Asociación de Niños de Guatemala”. That very day, the Court rejected the appeal as time-barred and because Mr. Tobar was not a party to the proceedings. Mr. Tobar filed an amparo appeal against the Court’s decision on February 2, 1999. Thereafter, on March 18 of that year, he submitted a brief in which he provided additional evidence such as the birth certificates of both children. The Court of Appeals issued a decision upholding the amparo appeal on May 5, 1999, and ordering that Mr. Tobar be made a party to the proceedings. The petitioners alleged that subsequently two judges disqualified themselves, and that on August 29, 2000, Mrs. Flor de María Ramírez and Mr. Gustavo Tobar sought joint legal representation and on November 6 requested that the proceedings be amended and that, inter alia, the children be ordered to appear in Court. On October 7, 2000, the new Court granted the appeal for review and scheduled a hearing. 23. The petitioners stated that only the father (who exercised representation for Mrs. Flor de María Ramírez) and a representative of the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Nation appeared at the hearing, convened on August 30, 2001. As a result of this hearing, the Court issued an order to send “letters rogatory to the Embassy of the United States of America so that, through the corresponding legal and administrative channels, the individuals [adoptive families of the children] be summoned to appear before this Court on November 15, 2001 at the latest, and make the minors Jeffrey Rainiery Arias Ramírez y Ricardo Osmín Tobar Ramírez available to this Judicial Body…” 24. The petitioners added that on November 29, 2001, the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Guatemala sent a letter to the Presiding Judge of the Supreme Court of Justice, stating that the Embassy of the United States had not processed the letters rogatory because it did not comply with the formalities required under the Inter-American Convention on Letters Rogatory and its Additional Protocol. 25. The petitioners reported that on December 19, 2001, the Court issued an order in which it informed the parties that these legal requirements had to be met. On June 20, 2002, the Court issued an order to initiate the procedure, and requested that Mr. Gustavo Amílcar Tobar state whether he was willing to defray the costs associated with summoning the adoptive parents. The petitioners indicated that on July 31, 2002, Mr. Tobar requested that the procedure go forward and stated that he had obtained a loan in order to finance the expenses related to the case. On August 20, 2002, the Court ordered that this procedure in the case go forward and that Mr. Tobar be summoned. The petitioners noted that Mr. Tobar was never informed what the cost would be for the translations and certifications necessary to process the letters rogatory, and that since that time, nothing has been done to either locate or summon the children. They alleged that the responsibility of the State was to continue with the legal procedures, send the letters rogatory, ensure ties with the biological parents and make a decision based on the best interest of the children. They asserted that the State also had the obligation to establish the corresponding liability in the irregular adoptions of the children Jeffrey and Ricardo. 26. The petitioners maintained that the proceedings to declare child abandonment, as well as the two out of court adoption procedures of the Ramírez brothers, in which different legal and administrative authorities were involved, violated the right to judicial guarantees, to protection of the family, and to humane treatment, recognized in Articles 5, 8, 17 and 25 of the American Convention, in detriment to Mr. Gustavo Amílcar Tobar Fajardo, Mrs. Flor de María Ramírez, and children Osmín Ricardo Tobar Ramírez and Jeffrey Rainiery Arias Ramírez. Additionally, they claimed that the facts constitute a violation of the right to special protection, enshrined in Article 19 of the American Convention, to the detriment of the children Osmín Ricardo and Jeffrey Rainiery. The foregoing is in connection with the duty to adopt provisions under domestic law and the obligation to respect rights, which is recognized in Articles 1 and 2 of the Convention. 27. In this regard, they argued that there is no justification for the proceedings to have taken so long without any resolution. They denounced that the issue was not complex, the parents’ involvement was very intense, and the rights impaired required a speedy solution; nevertheless, to date, the legal authorities have not