19. The victims' defense team also laid a complaint before the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico (CNDH), which issued Recommendation 8/2000 on July 14, 2000. In that document, the CNDH found, among other things, that soldiers acting without a proper court warrant conducted acts of harassment and searched the home of Teodoro Cabrera García, in violation of the right to legality and juridical security,7 and that acts of torture reported by the defense for the campesino environmentalists were amply demonstrated.8 The four recommendations in the document were addressed to the National Defense Ministry, but, as the petitioners allege, the CNDH “omitted to state its position over the unconstitutionality of the competence of the Military Prosecutor’s Office for the torture investigation.”9 20. The petitioners report that on August 28, 2000, the Fifth District Judge of the 21st Circuit Court sentenced Teodoro Cabrera to ten years of imprisonment and Rodolfo Montiel to six years and eight months of imprisonment, primarily “based on the confession extracted from the victims under torture and incommunicado detention, and without access to a lawyer.”10 The victims’ defense team appealed those sentences on the grounds that torture had been used to obtain a confession, but they were upheld by the First Unitary Tribunal of the 21st Circuit; that ruling was then appealed on the basis of the same violation of due process. The petitioners also declared that they offered medical evidence from two forensic experts, proving the torture suffered by Cabrera García and Montiel Flores, but that the Tribunal did not accept it as proof, and upheld the convictions. 21. The petitioners also declare that they pursued the remedies available within domestic jurisdiction to resolve their situation, but that these are ineffective because the military justice system lacks impartiality and independence for investigating the facts, and proceedings were unduly drawn out.11 Subsequently, in their "expanded petition", they maintain that in this case two separate domestic proceedings are involved, one of them before the ordinary courts, and one before military jurisdiction. As to the first, they refer in the following terms to the judgment of August 14, 2002, which upheld the convictions for "bearing weapons of exclusively military use": The appeal decision handed down by the Second Circuit Court no doubt constitutes more serious violations of the rights of Messrs. Montiel Flores and Cabrera García, because the Mexican State had the opportunity to put an end to a series of human rights violations, and yet failed to guarantee the impartiality of the judiciary, nor did it give the environmentalists access to judicial protection, thereby violating Articles 8(1), 25 and 1(1) of the Convention. This in turn has led to cover up and justification of illegal action by the Mexican army.12 B. The State 22. The first communication from the Mexican State on this matter was received on November 8, 2001 (six days after case P735/01 was opened), reporting that on that day Messrs. Cabrera García and Montiel Flores had been released from prison. At that time, the State asked the IACHR to grant precautionary measures for the protection of the environmentalists, as summarized in the corresponding section of this report. 23. In its response to the request for information on the petition, the Mexican State explained the reasons why it had decided to release the environmentalists, and it maintained that it had thereby "safeguarded the rights of Messrs. Montiel Flores and Cabrera García and of their defense attorneys to pursue such further proceedings before the competent jurisdictional 7 CNDH, Recommendation 08/2000 of July 14, 2000, page 22. 8 he Mexican ombudsman arrived at this conclusion after considering "the repeated silence" of the PGJM in the face of requests to deliver various documents, including a copy of the initial investigation 35ZM/06/99. CNDH, Recommendation 08/2000 of July 14, 2000, pages 24 and 25. 9 Communication of the petitioners of October 25, 2001, paragraph 15, page 4. 10 Idem, para. 17, page 4. 11 12 Communication of the petitioners of October 25, 2001, page 9. Communication of the petitioners of November 11, 2002, page 2. 4