7 lacking in logic or even minimum legal grounds and without precedent in the international and regional protective systems. 28. According to the Commission, this alleged violation “is not valid as a preliminary objection inasmuch as it concerns [the] Government's assessment of the legal arguments the Commission uses in the application,” which the Court will have the opportunity to address when it examines the merits of the point raised by the Commission. VIII 29. The following is the Court's consideration of the preliminary objections presented by Guatemala. The first objection concerns the lack of competence of this Court, on the grounds that the deprivation of liberty to which Mr. Nicholas Chapman Blake was subjected (on March 28, 1985) and his death (on March 29, 1985, according to the death certificate) occurred prior to Guatemala's acceptance of the jurisdiction of this Court (March 9, 1987), with the explicit clarification that such acceptance applied exclusively to events that “occurred after the date on which the instrument of acceptance was deposited with the Secretariat of the Organization of American States.” 30. There is no disagreement between the Government and the Commission on the fact that Mr. Blake's detention and death occurred during March 1985 or that those events took place before Guatemala had deposited the instrument of acceptance of the jurisdiction of this Court on March 9, 1987. 31. The disagreement between the parties concerns the effects of those events. The Government maintains that they ended in March 1985, while the Commission contends that the effects are continuous, since the deprivation of Mr. Blake's liberty and his death were discovered many years later and its consequences are still being felt, inasmuch as: they derive from Mr. Blake's kidnapping and subsequent forced disappearance by agents of the Guatemalan State and comprise, in addition to that crime, a series of violations including the coverup of the disappearance by high-level Government officials and the Guatemalan Armed Forces, as well as the delay and consequent denial of justice by the Guatemalan State. 32. At the public hearing on January 28, 1996, both parties further explained their arguments in response to questions from Judges Novales-Aguirre, Cançado Trindade, Jackman and Montiel-Argüello. The Government strongly urged its view that the events had all ended in March 1985, that is, prior to its acceptance of the jurisdiction of this Court. The Commission, for its part, reiterated that, in its view, there was continuity in Guatemala's violation of rights enshrined in the American Convention and that Mr. Blake's death should be considered to be a continuous crime since it was only discovered on June 14, 1992. 33. The Court is of the view that the acts of deprivation of Mr. Blake's liberty and his murder were indeed completed in March, 1985 -the murder on March 29 according to the death certificate, as Guatemala maintains- and that those events cannot be considered per se to be continuous. The Court therefore lacks competence to rule on the Government's liability. This is the only aspect of the preliminary objection which the Court considers to be well founded. 34. Conversely, since the question is one of forced disappearance, the consequences of those acts extended to June 14, 1992. As the Commission states in its application, government authorities or agents committed subsequent acts, and this, in the Commission's view, implies complicity in, and concealment of, Mr. Blake's arrest and murder. Although