9 reflected in the fundamental laws, collides with frequent practice. One bad day two agents detain a person driving his car down a city street. They say that he is required for “migration control.” They take him, without informing him about his rights or of the charges against him, to a prison six hundred miles away from where he was detained. He remains there twenty-eight months. Ultimately, his trial will be discontinued, if only provisionally. 37. The Inter-American Court’s jurisprudence also addresses this problem. Most, if not all cases of extra-legal execution, torture, forced disappearance, irregular proceedings, etcetera, etcetera, were preceded by a detention in which there was not even a remote respect for conditions that legitimize detention and that enable a distinction between an action of the State based on the Constitution and the kidnapping of a citizen, committed by “law enforcement” agents who impose their personal will on the general will reflected in the legal principle. 38. Rather than being unheard of, cases in which there was an arbitrary detention seem to be the majority –or at least they are very numerous and evident. From then on, the proceeding can become a labyrinth that is full of traps, and which certainly is not in accordance with the idea of a legal proceeding –an “ethical,” in addition to juridical, idea-, associated with the Rule of Law and which is, in fact, one of its most eloquent expressions or one of its most revealing negations. Describing this prosecutional labyrinth –as can be seen in the case that the Inter-American Court has decided on in this judgment- evokes in an absolutely natural manner the vicissitudes of defendant Joseph K, whom Kafka allows to wander around the uneven ground of the proceeding, without knowing what it is all about and where he is being taken. IX. Information on the charges 39. Helplessness in the proceeding itself –against which we must strive every day, with infinite patience and perseverance- is shown by attacks against certain rights and guarantees that constitute the democratic, civilized, evolved version of prosecution. One of these is the right to information on the charges against the defendant, which are the basis for the State’s action; this information goes hand in hand with the right to timely defense and that of the accused to remain silent. We cannot comprehend how these rights can still be systematically excluded, despite the accrual of constitutional provisions, legislation, and provisions of conventions, as well as the jurisprudence that asserts them and the political discourse that proclaims them. 40. What should be is set forth in Article 8(2)(b) of the American Convention: the right to “prior notification in detail to the accused of the charges against him.” And also, specifically, in principle 10 of the aforementioned set: “Anyone who is arrested shall be informed at the time of his arrest of the reason for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.” However, the distance between the principle and the facts still shows up with a disquieting regularity in the cases brought before the Inter-American Court. 41. As regards the moment in which the right to information on the charges and the right to defense must become effective, the judgment issued by the Inter-American Court in the Case of Tibi is once again explicit: at the time of detention and before the accused renders his first statement before the authorities. It cannot be otherwise. This had already been asserted in the enlightening North American jurisprudence based on the Miranda formula, often defended as well as criticized, and it has been the opinion of the Court, in regards to a specific topic, when it issued Advisory Opinion OC-16/99. The