criminal acts. This is a fundamental principle of International Human Rights Law.
The States themselves –that make up the collective guarantee in this matter—gave
the Inter-American Court the sole and exclusive power to hear and decide on
applications regarding facts, attributed to the States, that violate the rights and
freedoms protected by that international treaty. That is its contentious jurisdiction.
Not any other. When exercising the judicial protection of human rights, the Court
must abide by the stipulations of the Convention, just as domestic courts must
observe the regulations of the criminal system.
13.
Within this indispensable and rigorous framework, whose excess would
imply a violation, the Inter-American Court issues decisions regarding the facts that
violate the Convention and that imply the State’s international responsibility, not on
transgressions of different regulations that result in the responsibility of other
subjects. This explains why the Court that issues convictions for violations to
human rights does not also do so with regard to acts of terrorism, which are not
within its jurisdiction, nor does it go into detail in the analysis of the same, which
would imply a criminal proceeding foreign to its powers. It is important to mention
that the State itself acknowledged that “it does not correspond to the Court’s
jurisdiction to issue a ruling with regard to behaviors foreign and different to the
State’s international responsibility, such as those of SL.” (Sendero Luminoso)
14.
For that same reason, when the Inter-American Court refers to “victims” of
illegal acts, it can only refer to those who have been the object of behaviors that
violate the American Convention on Human Rights. It makes the assessments it can
and must make, without incurring in others that it cannot or must not make and
that are the responsibility of other instances, which must be addressed so they may
make the decisions that correspond to them. It is true that victims, in an ample and
general sense, are any person who suffers the loss or damage of a juridical good –
life, integrity, liberty, property—as a consequence of an illegal behavior. If the
latter corresponds to a violation of the American Convention, the classification of
victim and the corresponding punishment correspond to the Inter-American Court.
If it refers to the violation of criminal law, the classification and punishment
correspond to other courts.
15.
The State points out that the Court refers to certain people as members of
“armed groups”, basin on the fact that the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation
considers them members of a “terrorist subversive movement responsible for grave
violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.” The Court has not varied
at all the findings of the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. It leaves the
assessment made by the latter unchanged. The terms that the Court uses –within
the realm of its own jurisdiction and for the purposes of the procedures followed
before it—do not seek to “reassess” what that Commission has observed pursuant
to its institutional duties.
16.
A judgment of the Inter-American Court must be based on the evidence of
the violating acts of the Convention, from which the State’s responsibility derives.
Even when the respondent State’s acknowledgment of the facts and its
international responsibility does not determine, for itself, the Court’s judgment, it is
obvious that it constitutes relevant evidence. In the matter that currently occupies
us, there was an explicit and reiterated acknowledgment of the State with regard to
the facts that constitute violations to the American Convention.
17.
In the request for interpretation of the judgment on merits, the State
reiterated “it acknowledges the facts that led to the punishment of the Peruvian
State for grave violations to human rights because of the facts occurred in May
1992 and during the following months (…).” In the response to the application of
the Inter-American Commission, the State had already mentioned: “It is impossible