B.2.2. Responsible parties and criminal offense applied 199. As already mentioned in this Judgment (supra para. 97), on November 30, 1998, the Sentencing Court for Crime, Drug-trafficking and Offenses against the Environment of Baja Verapaz handed down a judgment convicting three people for the crime of “murder” with regard to Martha Julia Chen Osorio, Margarita Chen Uscap and Demetria Osorio Lajuj, victims of the massacre that took place on Cerro Pacoxom. However, the said court did not find anyone guilty of the Agua Fría massacre because none of those exhumed there had been identified, which meant that those presumably responsible could not be accused of the crime of murder. Subsequently, on October 7, 1999, the Sentencing Court for Crime, Drugtrafficking and Offenses against the Environment, with new judges, convicted the three said defendants, but only for the murder of Martha Julia Chen Osorio and Demetria Osorio Lajuj, because their “violent death” had been proved. On February 1, 2000, the Fourteenth Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Cobán, Alta Verapaz, upheld this judgment, merely amending the sentence. 200. In addition, despite the fact that the remains of approximately 148 members of the Río Negro community who were supposedly executed during the Pacoxom massacre were found, the judgment of October 7, 1999, only handed down a sentence for the “murder” of two victims, because they were the only ones identified and whose “violent death” could be proved. According to this judgment, the other facts could not be attributed to the accused because it had not been possible to identify the other remains. Therefore, the State justified its decision on its own failure to comply with the obligation to identify the remains. In this regard, during the public hearing, expert witness Michael Paul Hermann Mörth stated that, according to the said judgment, “in order to convict someone for murder, the victim must be duly identified and individualized. [However, in] the Agua Fría massacre, [this] paradigm resulted in the most absurd consequence ever, [since those responsible] were acquitted because the victims could not be identified. [Thus,] in [his opinion,] critical reasoning and the corresponding criteria have been sacrificed on the altar of completely exaggerated and useless formalities.” He also mentioned that it had not been taken into account that the bodies “were left spread out on the ground, exposed to animals […], that these human remains were hidden in a clandestine cemetery that was hidden for years […], thus leaving the skeletal remains exposed to the elements, to animals, and to anything else that, given this situation, obviously had an impact on the condition of the corpses, the remains, the bones, the skeletons.” 201. In addition, only three of the individuals identified as responsible were tried and punished. Nevertheless, on several occasions during the proceedings, the victims had indicated the names of other persons, particularly of members of the Civil Self-defense Patrols, who are also presumably responsible. The State did not find those individuals at the time; however, there is no indication that the necessary measures to find them were taken immediately. It was not until three years later; in other words, October 28, 2002 , that the public prosecutor asked the judge in charge of the case to issue arrest warrants for seven more individuals (supra para. 100). 202. On May 28, 2008, the Sentencing Court for Crime, Drug-trafficking and Offenses against the Environment found another five persons guilty of the crime of “murder” with regard to 26 members of the Río Negro community who were victims of the Pacoxom massacre (supra para. 101). However, other individuals who are presumably responsible have still not been located, including the army colonel who, since 1993, was named as one of those responsible. It should be underlined that, on January 28, 2003, during the criminal proceedings, Jesús Tecú Osorio, a victim in this case, indicated that approximately 10 soldiers from the military garrison of Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, were responsible for the facts 74