that the murderers made up a small strike team that behaved very "professionally" in carrying out crimes of this kind. 18. The ombudsman’s office also ruled that the right to personal security of Carmen Estrada (García-Prieto’s widow), Gloria Giralt de García-Prieto, and Mauricio García-Prieto Hillerman had been violated, and it noted the careless way in which the police and judicial authorities had proceeded in their investigations. 19. The resolution also stated that the constant surveillance and trailing suffered by the family and the possible involvement of members of the National Civil Police in those violations would indicate that responsibility for the murder went further than a small, isolated "strike team" and, consequently, that the group that carried out the crime must be connected to a "larger illegal armed structure, with major financial, operational, and logistics capabilities, and that at no time has such a structure been investigated by the appropriate police or judicial authorities, which points to an alarming level of impunity." 20. In addition, the ombudsman’s resolution said that the threats and harassments endured by the family were in part due to their persistence in seeking justice and respect for the guarantees of due legal process in the investigations. It also spoke of the possible involvement of members of the armed forces and listed the unjustified delays, irregularities, and procrastination in the judicial decisions handed down by the competent bodies. 21. According to the Office of the Attorney for the Defense of Human Rights, the State’s judicial apparatus acted negligently in investigating the incident and trying the perpetrators of the crime, in that in spite of the volume of complaints and information that the victim’s family brought before the competent agencies, they had not managed to clear up the events in full. In spite of the fact that the victim’s relatives and one of the perpetrators of the crime attested that Mr. Carlos Romero Alfaro (alias "Zaldaña"), a former officer of the National Police, had participated in the crime, the State had begun no investigation in that regard. 22. According to the complainants, Ramón Mauricio’s murder was the culmination of a series of threats that had begun in 1988 as a result of a land-ownership dispute. In the aftermath of Ramón Mauricio García-Prieto Giralt’s killing, the intimidation of the García-Prieto Giralt family and other individuals involved in investigating and trying the case has continued, endangering their right to freedom, security, and personal integrity. The acts of intimidation (being trailed, surveillance, and visits by armed men to family properties in San Miguel) intensified after the conviction of Mr. Raúl Argueta Rivas for the murder of Ramón Mauricio García-Prieto Giralt. 23. With regard to admissibility, the petitioners claim that they do not need to exhaust the remedies offered by domestic law because the rule requiring their exhaustion allows for exceptions, in that those remedies’ existence is merely formal when judicial recourse is neither effective nor adequate for protecting violated rights. In this regard, they refer to several irregularities in the proceedings which, they state, have hindered the clarification of the incident and have delayed the investigation. B. THE STATE The State has alleged, inter alia, that: 24. The murder of Ramón Mauricio Garcia-Prieto was the work of common criminals, that the alleged incidents are in no way related, and that they are not connected to Ramón Mauricio’s killing. 6 25. The injured parties never reported the threats to the competent authorities, and the petitioners provided no eye-witness evidence other than their own, nor any other kind of evidence. 6 See page 360. 3