guarantee personal liberty, to respect rights, to adopt provisions of domestic law, and to
ensure that the competent authorities complied with all decisions in which an appeal had
been found admissible.” Subsequently, on August 28, 2007, the parties signed a friendly
settlement agreement and this was ratified by the Inter-American Commission on October
12, 2007. The agreement indicated that:
1. […] having considered the conclusions reached by the […] Inter-American Commission in
Admissibility Report No. 70/05 […] and other evidence […], in particular, following the
implementation of a cooperation agreement under which the national Ministry of Justice and
Human Rights sent a team to work on site, the government of the province of Mendoza
understands that there is sufficient evidence to indicate [its] objective responsibility […] in the
case, and therefore decides to assume responsibility for the facts and their legal consequences,
pursuant to the said conclusions of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
2. Consequently […], the Government of the Argentine Republic states that it has no objection to
endorsing this acknowledgement in the international sphere, in its capacity as a State Party to the
Convention and, pursuant to the Constitution […], request[s] the Commission to consider that the
facts that took place in the said jurisdiction are acknowledged in the terms set out in point 1.
34.
The name of Ricardo Videla Fernández appears in friendly settlement report No.
84/11, in Annex I of the friendly settlement agreement dated August 28, 2007, on the
“deaths in the Mendoza Prison for which claims were submitted” and it is indicated that he
“was found hung in his cell in Unit 1.1 of the prison on June 21, 2005.” Both a criminal suit
and a civil suit filed by his parents are also mentioned. Under the said friendly settlement
agreement, the State undertook to implement certain pecuniary and non-pecuniary
measures of reparation, the latter of a general nature. In the case of the former, the parties
agreed to create an ad hoc court, which was formally installed on December 25, 2008. That
court issued an award decision on November 29, 2010, which examined “the reparation
amounts due to each victim indicated in the annexes to the [friendly settlement]
agreement.” With regard to the 10 deceased inmates of the Mendoza Prisons, including
Ricardo David Videla Fernández, the ad hoc court established that the State must pay
“1,413,000 United States dollars.” This ad hoc court also established an amount for costs
that included “the proceedings before the IACHR.” Among the non-pecuniary measures of
reparation, the “government of the province of Mendoza undert[ook] to take all the
necessary steps […] to ensure the continuation of the investigations into all the human
rights violations that led to the issue of the provisional measures by the […] Court.”
Furthermore, the award decision also established that “‘the human rights violations that
resulted in the intervention of the Arbitral Court had been committed in the context of
severe shortcomings in the Mendoza provincial prison system.”
35.
Lastly, in friendly settlement report 84/11, the Commission indicated that it
considered that the award decision met applicable international standards, expressed its
appreciation of the Arbitral Court for its work and the decision handed down, received “the
award decision as an important contribution to the settlement of this case,” and awaited
information from the parties on compliance with the measures of reparation established
therein.
36.
The foregoing reveals that case 12,532 on the Inmates of the Mendoza Prisons
addressed the detention conditions of the inmates and the human rights violations
committed by the State as a result of those conditions. Thus, the State’s acknowledgement
of responsibility included the violation of the rights to life, physical integrity, and health of
Ricardo Videla Fernández contained in Articles 4 and 5 of American Convention, based on
which the Arbitral Court established certain reparations (supra para. 34). Furthermore,
although the State undertook to continue the investigations into all the human rights
violations it had acknowledged, its acknowledgement of responsibility did not include facts
or human rights violations related to the said investigations.
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