charge of the investigation into those responsible and the institution to which the latter
belonged,342 particularly in the case of State agents.
267. This Court assesses positively the measures taken by the State from 1993 to 2002,
to recover the remains of the people who were executed, some of whom were buried in
communal graves or clandestine cemeteries. Despite these efforts, approximately 30 years
after the grave acts of the Río Negro massacres were perpetrated, the State has not taken
further measures to search for, individualize and identify other victims who died or
disappeared during the massacres, and has not identified several skeletons that have
already been found. In addition, as already mentioned in this Judgment, the exhumations
were performed, above all, based on the requests and criminal complaints made by the
surviving victims of the massacres rather than at the State’s initiative (supra para. 219).
268. Consequently, the Court considers that the State, in addition to the investigations
and criminal proceedings that are currently underway, must immediately prepare a
meticulous plan to search for the members of the Río Negro community who were forcibly
disappeared, as well as to find, exhume and identify the persons who were presumably
executed, and to determine the cause of death and possible prior injuries. In this plan, the
State must include the maximum use of its human, scientific and technical resources that
are appropriate for these purposes. In this regard, the State must:
a) Present to the Court, within six months of notification of this Judgment, a
timetable with specific short and medium-term goals, including an estimate of
the required administrative and budgetary resources, and indicating the State
authorities or instances that will intervene in the search, exhumation and
identification of those who disappeared and those presumably executed, as
appropriate, the competence of each of them, and which authorities or instances
will coordinate activities;
b) Employ or use the required relevant national and/or international scientific and
technical standards;343
c) Ensure that the State officials and any other persons who intervene in or
supports the work of searching, exhumation and identification, as applicable,
have due guarantees of safety, and initiate the necessary investigations should
any threats to or violence against these persons arise;
d) Incorporate, ex officio, the determination of the causes of death and injuries, as
appropriate, into the investigations that are underway or those that are opened
into the massacres in this case, for the pertinent effects;
e) Inform the representatives of the victims, in writing, about the progress of the
search, location, identification, and determination of the cause of death and
prior injuries, of the persons disappeared and presumably executed and, as
appropriate, return the remains of the said persons to their next of kin (infra
para. 270). The copies of the said communications and the responses of the
342
Cf. Case of the Dos Erres Massacre v. Guatemala, supra, para. 245.
343
For example, those established in the United Nations Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation
of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions and its model autopsy protocol. This protocol proposes guidelines
and procedures for: (1) Scene investigation; (2) Laboratory analysis of skeletal remains; (3) Final Report, and (4)
Repository for evidence. Cf. Case of the Mapiripán Massacre v. Colombia, supra, para. 305, and Case of Gelman v.
Uruguay, supra, para. 259.
92
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents