3 that could be involved in the “circumstance” of a disappearance; as a result of this, and as a frequent – but not necessary – culmination of the disappearance perpetrated. These other human and juridical rights may be numerous – and usually are – and they also merit autonomous consideration and punishment, in their own terms. Those rights that are plainly affected by the disappearance, according to the description in the 1994 Inter-American instrument – by which I am abiding in this note – are liberty and access to justice (an expression that I use with a general scope to include different manifestations of judicial guarantees, due process and adequate defense). 11. These rights – liberty and access to justice – correspond to the essence of the disappearance. The respective violations are inherent in the act that we are examining. It is not possible to conceive forced disappearance without liberty and access to justice being necessarily and immediately harmed. This is what is referred to when it is said that disappearance entails a violation of various juridical and human rights; in other words, it entails multiple offenses. Obviously, the latter status of an unlawful conduct is established based on the characteristics of that conduct and on its real and concrete effect on juridical rights; not the inverse, sustaining first that the conduct entails multiple offenses and then examining it to know what juridical and human rights it harms. 12. The Court must obligatorily ask itself this question: when does a forced disappearance cease? Certain relevant issues depend on the reply, including the jurisdiction to examine the facts. I will not mention the commencement of a statute of limitations also, because it is generally accepted that this does not come into effect in hypotheses of extremely grave violations, such as disappearance. The answer may be found – and thus the Court considered it in the case sub judice – in Article III of the 1994 Convention. When deciding the domestic definition of the crime of disappearance, this precept stipulates that the crime thus defined “shall be deemed continuous (continuing in the terminology that I am using) or permanent as long as the fate or whereabouts of the victim has not been determined.” However, what do we refer to when we speak of determining the fate or whereabouts of the victim? 13. It could be understood that the disappearance ceases when this fate or whereabouts have been established by finding the disappeared person alive, or his corpse or his remains when he has been executed or died from other causes. In its judgment of November 29, 2006 in the La Cantuta (Peru) case, the Inter-American Court added an element to this conventionbased indication, or rather, defined its scope – an alternative which should be pondered juridically – when it said that “while the whereabouts of [...] [disappeared] persons have not been determined, or their remains duly found and identified, the appropriate juridical treatment of [this situation] is that of forced disappearance of persons.” Hence, the Court refers to the identification of the remains as the point at which the forced disappearance ceases. 14. When adopting this criterion in the judgment in the Heliodoro-Portugal case, the InterAmerican Court presumed – as have other jurisdictional instances – that the disappearance ceased at the time the remains were identified (despite the fact that this is an action accrediting a specific act in the past, not the execution or consummation of an unlawful conduct), rather than at the time of the real or probable death of the victim (even though, at that moment, deprivation of liberty gave way to death, because it does not seem reasonable to speak of the “deprivation of liberty of a person who is deceased” and thus to suppose that this deprivation is prolonged after death). By basing the cessation of the criminal act on the identification of the remains, and not on the loss of life, the Court established its competence ratione temporis. This matter will probably be taken up by those who study these issues. 15. Regarding the description of forced disappearance in the Convention and some