CONCURRING OPINION
JUDGE MANUEL E. VENTURA ROBLES
1.
Despite having concurred with my vote to the approval of all
the operative paragraphs of the instant judgment, the allegation
made by the representatives of the victim in the brief of
requests, arguments, and evidence based on which the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights (hereinafter “the Court”, “the
Inter-American Court”, or “the Tribunal”) declared, in the present
case, the violation by the Republic of Ecuador of the Right to
Humane Treatment, acknowledged by Article 5 of the American
Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter “the Convention” or “the
American Convention”), in detriment of Mr. Rigoberto Acosta
Calderón, has aroused in my mind several worries on subjects that
the Court could have covered in its judgment, but did not. One of
them is the violation to Mr. Acosta’s psychic and moral integrity
in this case.
2.
Article 5 of the Convention, in its paragraphs 1 and 2,
states that:
1. Every person has the right to have his physical,
mental, and moral integrity respected.
2. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel,
inhuman, or degrading punishment or treatment. All
persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with
respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.
3.
The Court, in its judgment, expressed in paragraph 143 that
“The arbitrary arrest and the repeated non-recognition
of Mr. Acosta Calderón’s right to a due process
constitutes a situation in which the psychic and moral
integrity could have been affected. However, in the
present case, the Court does not have enough elements to
issue a ruling on the violation of Article 5 of the
Convention.”
4.
The worry in my mind referred not to the fact that since
there is no evidence in the case file regarding if Mr. Acosta
Calderón suffered any damage to his physical integrity during his
imprisonment, or that the Court did not seek it through an order
that would determine the presentation of evidence to facilitate
adjudication of the case since the victim’s whereabouts were
unknown, but instead to the non-determination of the violation of
Article 5 of the American Convention in what refers to the psychic
and moral integrity of a person who, according to the same
judgment, spent more than five years in preventive detention, as a
consequence of an imprisonment that the same Tribunal classified