moment for the State to be able to exercise its right to defense. Third, the Court has maintained that the State that files this objection must specify the domestic remedies that remained to be exhausted, and prove that those remedies were available and effective. 12 22. In this regard, the Court notes that the State, in its communication of June 18, 2004, responding to the petition lodged by the representatives before the Inter-American Commission, urged the presumed victims “to continue availing themselves of the existing legal and political remedies in the domestic jurisdiction until they had exhausted them.”13 The Court also notes that the State had not given any other indication of the remedies that should be exhausted up until its answering brief of July 3, 2017; in other words, at the procedural stage before the Court. In that brief, the State advised that the presumed victims “had not availed themselves of Articles 70 and 71 in Chapter Nine of the Law on Amparo, Habeas Corpus and Constitutionality relating to clarification and expansion.” 23. In this regard, the Court notes that, even though the State indicated, during the admissibility stage before the Commission, that the petitioners should continue making use of the legal and political remedies which existed in the domestic jurisdiction, this was a general indication that did not mention the remedies that had not been exhausted or their effectiveness. The Court recalls that it was not until its answering brief that the State, for the first time, indicated the remedies that the presumed victims should have exhausted before having recourse to the international jurisdiction. Accordingly, the Court considers that, at no time during the admissibility stage, which is the proper procedural moment for filing an objection based on failure to exhaust domestic remedies, had the State clearly cited which remedies should be exhausted or proved their effectiveness, as required by Article 46(1) of the Convention. 24. Consequently, the Court considers that the preliminary objection of failure to exhaust domestic remedies filed by Guatemala is inadmissible, due to its belated submission. V. PRIOR CONSIDERATION A. Determination of the presumed victims in this case A.1. Arguments of the parties and observations of the Commission 25. The representatives indicated that Roberto Gómez García, L.A.L., María Elena Morales Villafuerte, Heidi Mariela Lucas Gonzáles and Marvin Josué Lucas González, included as next of kin of the victims by the Commission in its Merits Report, are also people living with HIV who have endured the same violations described throughout the litigation and, therefore, should be considered direct victims who have not received comprehensive care as people living with HIV. They also argued that that Katherine Girón Zepeda should possibly be considered a victim in this case by application of Article 35(2) of the Rules of Procedure, because this is a collective case insofar as it relates to 49 presumed victims who have not received comprehensive care and who are in a vulnerable situation, and that Ms. Girón Zepeda became infected with HIV because the failure to provide adequate medical care to her mother led to her infection. Cf. Case of Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras. Preliminary objections. Judgment of June 26, 1987. Series C No. 1, para. 88, and Case of Amrhein et al. v. Costa Rica. Preliminary objections, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of April 25, 2018. Series C No. 354, para. 39. 12 Communication P-435-2004 of June 18, 2004, signed by Frank La Rue Lewy, President of COPREDEH, addressed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (evidence file, folio 111). 13 8