7 FIRST PRELIMINARY OBJECTION RATIONE TEMPORIS COMPETENCE OF THE COURT 39. 40. Arguments of the State a) upon depositing the Instrument of Ratification of the Convention and recognizing the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court on August 21, 1990, the Chilean State declared that its recognition of the jurisdiction of the Court refers to “the events subsequent to the date on which such Instrument of Ratification was deposited, or in any case, to events which took place after March 11, 1990;” b) the event that gives grounds for the criminal action is the crime of murder against Mr. Almonacid-Arellano, committed on September 17, 1973, and which falls within the scope of the declaration of lack of ratione temporis competence of the Court made by the State, as such murder took place before March 11, 1990; c) the criminal investigation is a single and ongoing unity which is permanent in time. It is a judicial proceeding which started in September 1973 and since then has been dismissed time and time again. The proceeding cannot be partitioned, divided, separated or disassociated, not even materially or formally, for it is and has always invariably and permanently been a single proceeding, the processing of which has been ongoing, as has the numbering of the case file under which it was started, and d) the judicial actions started by the victim’s next of kin after 1990 are not “independent events,” a characteristic which is far from the material, formal, and legal reality. Arguments of the Commission a) various independent events and effects which started and took place after the recognition of the contentious jurisdiction of the Court by the State and which have persisted and been recurrent, and are related to the violation of Articles 8 and 25 of the Convention, can be claimed to have occurred, among them: i) ii) iii) iv) the transfer of the proceedings on December 5, 1996, to the military courts, though they were started on the grounds of ordinary crimes which do not refer to acts committed by the staff involved in the course of the official duties thereof; the failure to investigate, prosecute, and punish all those persons who were responsible for the death of Mr. AlmonacidArellano since March 11, 1990; the judgment of January 28, 1997 rendered by the lower military court which acquitted the alleged person responsible for the death of Mr. Almonacid-Arellano; the ratification of such judgment by the Court-Martial on March 25, 1998, which further established that the 1978 Self-Amnesty Law was applicable;