SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE A.A. CANÇADO TRINDADE 1. I have voted for the adoption, by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, of this Judgment in the case of La Cantuta v. Perú. Considering the relevance of the issues therein addressed by the Court, I am obliged to add this Separate Opinion to the Judgment, with my personal opinions as grounds of my position regarding the matters discussed by the Court. I shall focus my considerations in four basic points, to wit: a) the recurrence of the State crime: the massacre of La Cantuta in the context of a State criminal practice (as detached from the application filed before the Inter-American Court, the determination of the facts by the Inter-American Court, and the acknowledgement of aggravated liability by the respondent government itself); b) the contribution of the Inter-American Court to the prevalence of the Law towards the end of self-amnesties; c) the inadmissible aggression to the Universitas; and d) the inadmissibility of violations against jus cogens. I. The Recurrence of the State Crime: The Massacre of La Cantuta in the Context of a State Criminal Practice. 1. The Application before the Inter-American Court 2. In the application of February 14, 2006 filed by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights before this Court in the case at issue, the Commission refers, inter alia, to a public complaint (dated May 5, 1993) by a General of the Peruvian Army (Mr. Rodolfo Robles Espinoza) in the sense that the National Intelligence Service (SIN) of Peru had organized a “death squad” called Grupo Colina, “responsible for the physical elimination of terrorists,” which perpetrated the massacre of November 1991 of 14 people in the case of Barrios Altos (known to this Court), as well as the extra-legal executions of a professor and 9 students of the University of La Cantuta (which took place in July, 1992) (para. 84), also a case which this Court has ruled upon. In fact, the cases are part of a systematic practice planned and executed by State agents, according to the orders given by the highest rank of the State public power. 3. The enumeration of facts included in the above mentioned application filed by the Commission is based, also, in the broad determination of facts by the Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación -CVR- (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru), included in its Final Report of 2003. In this case of La Cantuta, the members of the Peruvian army and the agents of the Grupo Colina broke in the university campus, burst into the homes of professors and students, kidnapped the victims (in the dawn of July 18, 1992), took them with “unknown destination” and executed them. The kidnapped victims of La Cantuta remained missing until July 12, 1993, when mortal remains were located, apparently theirs, in clandestine graves located in the Chavilca gorge, in the city of Cienguilla (paras. 54-58). 4. However, to date, the mortal remains of only two of the executed victims have been identified. Examinations by experts concluded that the victims - the professor and the nine university students kidnapped at La Cantuta - had been executed with “shots of firearms in the head” and that their mortal remains had been “burnt in state of putrefaction” (pars 68 and 61). In the dawn of the day, the crime was committed (on July 18, 1992) the State machinery of concealment was set to work.