21
submitted by the parties with respect to the supervening events that occurred after
the application was filed.
46.
As regards the documents submitted during the public hearing held in this
case, which are the three reward notices published in three national dailies on March
19, 20 and 21, 2001, the two documents pertaining to steps taken by the prosecutor
of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the lower court, signed on November 20, 2001,
February 1 and 26, 2002, and the briefs pertaining to the capture of Ángel Belisario
Hernández González on January 17, 2003, the Court includes them in the body of
evidence because they were produced after the answer to the application, in
accordance with Article 43 of the Rules of Procedure.
47.
In its final oral and written pleadings (supra 23 and 26), the State challenged
the document included as Annex 1 of the application, which the Commission entitled
“Informe Secreto del ‘Caso Juan Humberto Sánchez’ dirigido al Señor Comandante
en Jefe de las Fuerzas Armadas, General de División Don Luis Alonso Discua Elvir,
firmado por el Comandante de Infantería Enmanuel Flores Mejía con fecha 29 de
junio de 1992,” which the State characterized as false and submitted five documents
in support of its challenge, basing this action on Article 43(3) of the Rules of
Procedure of the Court. It furthermore argued that:
a)
neither did Colonel Flores Mejía sign that document, nor did General
Luis Alonso Discua Elvir receive it. The State also pointed out that this is
made evident because the report is not drafted in the usual military language,
the serial number in the report is not that of Colonel Flores Mejía, but rather
that of another, already deceased military officer, that it contains certain
mistakes, and that it mentions Captain Nelson Lagos, who was elsewhere at
the time of that report.
b)
with respect to the form of the document under discussion, the State
called the attention of the Court to the fact that a series of items present in
the report supplied by the Commission are not in accordance with the
practices of the Armed Forces, such as the type of paper used, placement of
the stamp labeling the document as “secret,” the lack of a file and record
number, the addressee, the language used in the greeting and the
complimentary close, mistakes in the numbering of the paragraphs and
subparagraphs, omission of the correct expression of names, ranks and
positions of the persons mentioned in the report, spelling mistakes, and a
stamp and signature that are not those of the person who supposedly signs
the document. Specifically regarding the spelling mistakes, the State pointed
out that these could not have been committed by Colonel Flores Mejía, who
graduated from the Francisco Morazán Military Academy in Honduras and has
taken several higher level courses.
c)
with respect to the content of the challenged document, the State
pointed out that the document shows inconsistencies, as it refers to facts that
did not occur, such as appearance of the Mayor of the Municipality of
Colomoncagua at the facilities of the Tenth Infantry Battalion in the
Municipality of Marcala to make a statement in 1992.
Therefore, the State argued that the content of the report filed by the Commission is
“totally false.”
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