l. The persons who demobilized Abel López and Roberto Gutiérrez, who made accusations in 2005 against “aka. la Bruja” (the witch) as a participant in the killing of the 4 soldiers, “haven’t even been cited to make a statement;” m. Soldier Esteban Carreño indicated that he was not aware of anything that happened as he had drunk some beers, without ever explaining why they “take an alcohol impaired person to a military operation;” n. Soldier Granados Ramírez refers to three vans: yellow, green and red, it was Lieutenant Prieto who “during one of his statements acknowledged the existence in his parking of at least one white truck;” however, this was not investigated thoroughly; and o. The contradictions posed by Lieutenant Prieto throughout the investigation were never investigated. In his voluntary deposition of March 1998, he said that he did not know who the members of the patrol were and who shot Mr. Quiñónez, even though in another statement he “accused SL. Tabares Mejía, who was killed on April 24, 1996 as the author,” also, he maintained that he was in the second vehicle and that only the first one was ambushed. However in the hearing before the Military War Court he admitted that “three vehicles participated in the operation and that he lost sight of the victim when he threw himself against the truck, an event that he had not referred to previously. 290. On the other hand, the Commission notes that according to the information from the Investigation Judge to the Solicitor General’s Office, “the paraffin test was not done to the corpse” to determine if the weapon found was fired by Mr. Wilfredo Quiñónez. According to the explanation given domestically, staff of SIJIN did not have the necessary materials to conduct such a test or the atomic absorption test at the time of the events. 291. The Commission notes that due to the lack of proceedings and evidence highlighted, the Second Office of the Attorney General acting at the Military High Court stated that “negligence and carelessness of the investigators was obvious, both in the ordinary jurisdiction as well as in the Military Criminal jurisdiction.” Also, the Military High Court described that the investigation “during the prolonged period that has passed,” “in no way meets the constitutional standards for a criminal proceeding … in that it did not clarify unequivocally the precise place, time and circumstances in which the events happened.” As a result of these failures, the Commission observes that the investigation after been closed had to be reopened by the ordinary jurisdiction to finally be closed on September 28, 2009. This is more than 14 years from the moment that the events took place. The Commission notes that even though different authorities took note of the deficiencies, and the “negligence and carelessness” in the investigation, they failed to take measures to correct or sanction such deficiencies. 292. In addition, the Commission considers that from the analysis of the various proceedings and military judicial decisions, the absence of proceedings to count with additional elements to compare the accounts from military officers and identify all the members of the armed forces that participated in the events is to be noted. Some of these failures that took place during the long period of time in which the case was under the military criminal jurisdiction have not been fixed in the ordinary jurisdiction and some others had an impact on the real possibility to gather evidence. 293. As an example, one of the witnesses, Mr. Reynel, who according to Mr. Noriega was the owner of the shop from which the events could be observed and from where the three youths had taken in their bicycles, died on April 2005, which made his lack of participation in the proceedings irreparable. Also, it is to be noted that according to the case file, there was a person who allegedly wanted to contribute to the investigation, Mr. Fernán Sierra, and its later mentioned that his wish was to negotiate a price for his information, and therefore did not provide any data,” without any explaining if there was any follow up. This situation is especially serious taking into account that this person was killed under circumstances that are not clarified in the file and without determining if his death is related to the case.