11
For the State:
Acisclo Valladares-Molina, Agent;
Carlos Augusto Orozco-Trejo, Alternate Agent;
Guillermo A. Carranza-Taracena, Assistant;
Acisclo Valladares-Urruela, Assistant;
César Guillermo Castillo, Assistant;
Rosa María Estrada-Silva, Assistant; and
José Miguel Valladares-Urruela, Assistant.
For the Commission:
Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, Attorney;
Marcela Matamoros, Assistant; and
Mark Martel, Assistant.
48. On November 13, 1997, the State submitted two briefs in which it offered as
evidence socioeconomic studies of the victims and their families, requesting that they
be admitted as evidence. On the following day the Court decided "[t]o reject, as out of
order, the inclusion of [those] studies as evidence in the merits of the instant case."
49. On the same day the State submitted to the Court its comments on the
testimony given by Mr. Julio Aníbal Trejo-Duque. Guatemala stated that
[t]he statement by Judge JULIO ANÍBAL TREJO-DUQUE demonstrates, once more, that there
are two clearly differentiated groups of persons connected with this case. Group I, composed
of AUGUSTO ANGÁRITA-RAMÍREZ, DORIS TORRES-GIL, JOSÉ ANTONIO MONTENEGRO, OSCAR
VÁSQUEZ and MARCO ANTONIO MONTES-LETONA, prosecuted in the courts of justice and
submitted to judicial proceedings, as stated in acts and illustrated in Judge Trejo-Duque’s
testimony. There is, at the same time, a second group quite different to the first, composed of
JULIÁN SALOMÓN GÓMEZ-AYALA, ANA ELIZABETH PANIAGUA-MORALES, PABLO CORADOBARRIENTOS, ERIK LEONARDO CHINCHILLA, MANUEL DE JESÚS GONZÁLEZ-LÓPEZ and
WILLIAM OTILIO GONZÁLEZ-RIVERA, individuals abducted and murdered by unknown persons
unknown.
50. On November 26, 1997, of that year the Commission reported that in the event
of the Court’s accepting the brief containing the State’s comments on Mr. TrejoDuque’s testimony, it would request the procedural right to also submit its
observations on that testimony. The President granted a period for presentation of
those comments until December 19, 1997, on which date the Commission submitted
the brief in question to the Court in English, followed by the Spanish translation on
January 9, 1998.
51. On December 10, 1997, and February 4, 1998, the State requested the Court to
admit, as of right, the documents rejected by the President on November 6, 1997
(supra, para. 45) and by the Court on November 14, 1997 (supra, para. 46). The
Commission submitted its comments on the State’s first petition on January 6, 1998,
requested that note be taken of the fact that it had still not received a copy of the
documents referred to in those briefs and, with regard to the merits, stated that
it categorically reject[ed] the requests submitted by the Government of Guatemala [and that
as] the Agent of the State had presented no reason to justify the Honorable Court’s
reconsideration of its previous decision to reject those offers (see the two Orders of the
Honorable Court of November 14, 1997), it is evident that repetition of these requests
breaches the principle of judicial economy (sic). The Commission considers that the Illustrious
Government’s reiteration of the request makes a mockery of the most basic rules of due
process.