2 person of Noel de Jesús Beteta Alvarez and who was identified by the same court as the State agent at the moment of the wrongdoing; b) the State institutional liability for lawbreaking by the State agent Noel de Jesús Beteta Alvarez in the facts herein, pursuant to Article 3 from the Political Constitution of Guatemala; c) The State institutional liability when, due to non compliance with Article 3 of the Political Constitution of Guatemala and Article 4 of the American Convention, it did not guarantee the right to life and integrity of Myrna Mack Chang; and d) the institutional State liability for a slow process that started on February 1994 aimed at the identification and punishment of the abettors of the violation of the right to life of Myrna Mack Chang and that extended beyond the reasonable period foreseen by numeral 1 of Article 8 of the American Convention and that represent, per se, a violation of the rights to access to justice and with respect to the principles of due process and due guarantees foreseen by the same numeral 1º of Article 6 of the American Convention. In the light of the question asked at the public hearing by one of the Court judges to the State agent about the scope of the acceptance of his liability for the facts charged in the application, he responded that it was not a case of acquiescence since, in the case, “there is not such a concept.” The ambiguity in the statement of the acceptance of the State facts, made the Court to order the continuity of the probative process, whose result was, according to the judgment, an absolute proof of the circumstances leading to the death of Mrs. Myrna Mack Chang with a direct involvement of State agents, hindering of the investigation of the facts, legal ineffectiveness for the prosecution and punishment of the liable parties, with a resulting violation of Articles 4, 5, 8, 25, all pursuant to Article 1(1) of the American Convention on Human Rights. II In the public hearing on February 18, 2003, the Court heard the testimony of Lucrecia María Hernández Mack, daughter of the victim, who declared that “after the death of her mother, justice is a pursuit intrinsic to her family. She felt outraged after finding out that the State, that should protect them, killed her mother because it was not a member of the State who happened to kill her, but the murder was ordered by the Department of Presidential Security of the Chief of Staff of Guatemala, and her country, especially the courts of law, have not done anything to undertake a due and prompt judicial proceeding...; the little progress made in her mother’s case has not been the result of the State good faith..., on the contrary, the State has done everything possible to hinder the case, since they murdered the police officer in charge of the investigation and pointed to Noel de Jesús Beteta as the perpetrator, several appeals and legal protections have been filed, thus going beyond the applicable deadlines to solve them, her family, the attorneys, and AVANCSO personnel and the Myrna Mack foundation have been victims of threats and intimidation.” As stated before, these facts: involvement of senior government officials as the murder abettors, a lack of effective and timely justice, impunity of one or some perpetrators, and with respect to all the abettors, were established during the

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