4 10. The Commission appointed Julio Prado Vallejo as its delegate before the Court, and Santiago Cantón, Ariel Dulitzky, Martha Braga and María Claudia Pulido as its legal advisors. 11. In its September 27, 2001 communication, the Secretariat of the Court (hereinafter “the Secretariat”), under instructions by the President de the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights (hereinafter “the President”), informed the Commission, pursuant to Article 34 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court (hereinafter “the Rules of Procedure”), that it was not possible to notify the application in the Juan Humberto Sánchez case (No.11.073), because it contained defects of substance and, therefore, it granted the Commission twenty days to make the pertinent corrections and to submit the required information. On October 17, 2001, the Commission sent the documentation requested. 12. In its October 26, 2001 note, the Court notified the State and the representatives of the alleged victim and his next of kin (hereinafter “the representatives of the alleged victim”) of the application and its annexes. It also informed the State that it had the right to appoint an ad hoc judge to participate in consideration of the case. 13. On November 22, 2001, the representatives of the alleged victim requested a fifteen-day extension of the period to submit their brief with requests, pleadings and evidence in the instant case. Said extension to December 7, 2001, was authorized and communicated to them on November 23 of that same year. 14. On November 23, 2001, the State requested an extension “of no less than two months” to answer the application, appoint its agents and designate an ad hoc judge, due to the political transition period that the country was going through at that time. On November 24, the Secretariat, under instructions by the President, informed the State that “due to the exceptional circumstances stated […], the extension requested ha[d] been granted until January 12, 2002, and was nonrenewable.” 15. In a brief received by the Court on December 7, 2001, the representatives of the alleged victim submitted their requests, pleadings and evidence with respect to the application in the instant case. On December 14, 2001, the Secretariat forwarded the documentation received to the Inter-American Commission and to the State and granted them a non-renewable thirty-day term to submit whatever observations they deemed pertinent. 16. On January 11, 2002 the State raised a preliminary objection regarding exhaustion of domestic remedies, answered the application and submitted its observations to the brief with requests, pleadings and evidence filed by the representatives of the alleged victim. On that same date, the State designated Carlos Humberto Arita Mejía as its agent and Jorge Alberto Milla Reyes as its deputy agent. On February 7 and August 19, respectively, the State appointed -as substitutes of the aforementioned persons- Sergio Zavala Leiva as agent and Argentina Wellerman Ugarte, as deputy agent. 17. On January 14, 2002, the Inter-American Commission submitted its observations on the brief with requests, pleadings and evidence filed by the representatives of the alleged victim.