51 not only allow the State to fulfill its obligation to investigate and punish all those responsible, but it also is “one of the most effective measures to forestall these acts.” Pleadings of the representative of the alleged victims and their next of kin 135. The representative of the alleged victims and their next of kin argued that the State breached Articles 8 and 25 of the American Convention to the detriment of Emilio Moisés and Rafael Samuel Gómez Paquiyauri, as well as of their next of kin, because: a) even though there were grounds to consider that the facts were part of a practice of arbitrary detentions and extra-legal executions at the time, the Peruvian courts presented the deaths of the alleged victims as isolated acts of “a few ‘bad members of the Peruvian National Police’” and only convicted the crew of the police cars in charge of custody of the alleged victims and they identified a Captain, César Augusto Santoyo Castro, as the only alleged mastermind of the facts; the above despite the fact that one of the accused acknowledged that the orders were also issued by other superiors; b) there is evidence that the accused in the domestic proceeding and their superiors agreed on how to present the facts, as well as that the former received financial support in exchange for not accusing their superiors; c) State mechanisms acted in such a way that they obstructed the investigation, for example, “presenting the matter to public opinion as if the minors had died as a consequence of an armed confrontation with the police, fabricating evidence and making other evidence disappear;” d) the Peruvian judiciary failed in its responsibility to independently and impartially investigate the facts of the case and it did not provide justice to the next of kin of the alleged victims, because it did not attach due importance to the alleged arbitrary detention and alleged tortures; it exempted from liability most of the agents who acted as masterminds, as well as other accomplices to the crime; and it released the only convicts shortly after they had been imprisoned; e) compensation ordered under domestic venue has not been received by the next of kin of the alleged victims; furthermore, compensation to be paid by the persons who committed the crime as a consequences of their individual liability is independent and does not exempt the State from its responsibility to directly redress the injury caused; and f) since in Peru there is no social support fund for low income families to cover the essential costs of representation in a contentious case for human rights violations, the State did not fulfill its obligation to allow the victims access to justice. Pleadings of the State 136. The State argued that: a) in the criminal proceeding against the direct perpetrators and