15 49. The Court shall now consider the arguments of both parties on the merits of the Case. 50. In its application to the Court and in its closing arguments, the Commission contends, in essence, that the Government had violated, to the detriment of the relatives of the young Genie-Lacayo, Articles 8, 25 and 24 of the Convention as a result of the Nicaraguan Judiciary's reluctance to prosecute and punish those responsible for GenieLacayo's death and to order reparation for the damages caused. 51. The Commission is of the view that the Government also infringed, in addition to Article 8(1), the provisions of Article 2 of the American Convention by failing to take such legislative or other measures as were necessary to give effect to the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Convention; that Decrees 591 and 600, in granting broad margins of discretion and entrusting the Army High Command with the punishment or otherwise of the accused, established conditions conducive to the violation of the rights to justice, to due process and to equal protection, and that those provisions placed the members of the Sandinista Popular Army on a different level to the rest of Nicaraguan society, thereby impairing the rights enshrined in the American Convention. 52. The Commission further stated that the Government agents committed acts that resulted in the denial of justice, including the disappearance of evidentiary documents and the contempt displayed by the military witnesses who refused to appear to testify before the Seventh Court of the Criminal District of Managua. According to the Commission, the domestic case was not processed within a reasonable time and, furthermore, norms contrary to the purpose and aim of the American Convention were applied, such as Decrees 591 and 600, containing respectively the Law on the Organization of the Military Judge Advocate and Military Criminal Procedure, and the Provisional Military Criminal Law. 53. The Commission reiterated its view that to prosecute ordinary crimes as though they were military crimes simply because they had been committed by members of the military breached the guarantee of an independent and impartial tribunal, basing its argument on a decision of the United Nations Human Rights Committee; United Nations fundamental principles three and five concerning the Independence of the Judiciary: Article 16(4) of the Minimum Standards of Rules of Human Rights in States of Emergency (Paris, 1984), and the literature of the Inter-American Commission itself. The Commission also cited the considerations expressed by the Supreme Court of Justice of Nicaragua in its judgment of December 20, 1993, which led that jurisdiction to determine the responsibility of the persons accused of the murder of young Genie-Lacayo belonged to the military courts, supported by aforementioned Decrees 591 and 600, but adding that it did not agree with its provisions so that, in the opinion of that High Court, they should be amended by the National Assembly at its earliest convenience. 54. In its response to the application and in its closing arguments, the Government maintained in substance that the dockets of the police inquiry and the criminal case in the court's showed that there had been continuous and ongoing procedural activity, so that justice had been promptly and fully administered. 55. According to the Government, the allegation that justice had been obstructed by the refusal of twelve military witnesses to testify before the court of first instance was unacceptable, inasmuch as most of the military witnesses had given statements; if a few had not done so it was because they had not been duly summoned. 56. The Government also challenged the Commission's allegation that the delay in the