3 regular session, which it was unable to do because of the high number of requests for hearings. On September 3, 2012, the petitioner once again expressed his interest in the IACHR holding a hearing on his case during the upcoming regular session of the IACHR to be held in October 2012. In a communication of October 5, 2012, the Commission advised the petitioner that it was unable to grant his request. On December 19, 2012, the petitioner made another request to the IACHR to hold a hearing on his case during the 147th regular session, which was granted by the Commission and the petitioner was served notice thereof in a communication of February 11, 2013. On February 22, 2013, the IACHR received a communication from the petitioner, which was forwarded to the State on March 14, 2013. On March 4 and 25, 2013, the IACHR received additional information from the petitioner, which was forwarded to the State in a communication of June 6, 2013. The State submitted observations in a communication dated July 16, 2013, which were sent to the petitioner for his reference on September 17, 2013. III. POSITIONS OF THE PARTIES A. Petitioner 11. The petitioner states that in 1994, when he held the rank of National Police Commander, he was appointed Chief of the Deputy Directorship of Passports of the Office of Migration, which was headed by PNP Coronel José Matayoshi Matayoshi. He notes that the jurisdiction of the Chief of the Deputy Directorship of Passports was confined to the area of Lima and did not extend to the offices in charge of issuing passports in the provinces, inasmuch as these offices were functionally and administratively under the Deputy Directorship of Migratory Control, which was headed by PNP Commander Julio Lozada Castro. 12. The petitioner claims that over August and September 1994, the media published several news stories about forged passports seized from fugitives from justice, including Carlos Manrique Carreño, who was reputedly one of the biggest fraudsters ever in the history of Peru and was arrested in New York with a passport issued in someone else’s name, which was supposedly issued in Lima bearing the signature and seal of the alleged victim, Commander Zegarra Marín. 13. Mr. Zegarra Marín recounts that when he learned of these news stories, after taking the pertinent steps to ascertain the veracity of the stories, he filed a complaint with the Director of Migration and the Minister of the Interior against PNP Captain Roberto Cárdenas Hurtado, Chief of the Migration Office of Tumbes, in order to defend his and his family’s honor, as it was a fact proven in a judicial proceeding that the aforementioned irregularly issued passports came out of the Tumbes office, and not his. 14. The petitioner claims that as a result of his complaint, a police investigation was opened and Police Report No. 079 of October 21, 1994, was generated. In the report, the individuals who were probably responsible for the passport forgery were identified by name and they included police officers and civilian officials, though the petitioner’s name did not appear among them. He also noted that this report set a judicial proceeding into motion. Based on the account of the petitioner, one of the codefendants, “in collusion with the prosecuting attorney” and outside of the police investigations, allegedly gave “preliminary investigation statements,” which were not included in the Police Report and were “maliciously” withheld by the Prosecuting attorney for 24 hours, until the criminal charges were formally brought on October 21, 1994, for the sole purpose of depriving the alleged victim of his right to a defense. He contends that in said statements, he was charged with acts he did not commit in order to