6 The State also requested that the Court order the application filed based on the objections entered. 16. On October 29, 1996, the Commission submitted its written brief in response to the preliminary objections, and requested that the Court dismiss the objections in toto. 17. On November 26, 1996, the State presented its response to the application. 18. Via two briefs dated January 6 and May 30, 1997, respectively, the State petitioned the Court to rule on the preliminary objections it had filed before deciding the merits of the case. On June 2, 1997, the Secretariat informed the State that its request would be brought to the Court’s attention at its upcoming session. On September 25, 1997, the Court advised the State that “the decision on the merits of the case [would] never be issued until the judgment on the State’s preliminary objections [had been] entered.” 19. On March 9, 1998, the President convened the Inter-American Commission and the Peruvian State to a public hearing that was to be held at the seat of the Court on June 8 of that year to hear their arguments on the preliminary objections. 20. The public hearing was at the seat of the Court on June 8, 1998, at which there appeared: For the State of Peru: Jorge Hawie Soret, Agent; For the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: Domingo E. Acevedo, Delegate; Ariel Dulitzky, Assistant, and Ronald Gamarra, Assistant. 21. As evidence to facilitate adjudication of the case, on November 9, 1998, the President requested that the State provide all documentation pertaining to the petitions of habeas corpus filed on February 26 and June 26, 1986, and any other petition filed seeking a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of Mr. Durand Ugarte and Mr. Ugarte Rivera, as well as the case brought against these two men for the crime of terrorism. 22. On November 27, 1998, by order of the President, the Commission was asked, as per its request in the application, to inform the Court what evidence from the Neira Alegría et al. Case was relevant to the processing of the instant case. 23. On December 14, 1998, the Commission requested that the Court add the following evidence from the Neira Alegría et al. Case to the evidence in the instant case: the Minority Report of the Peruvian Congressional Committee of Inquiry into the events that transpired on June 18 and 19, 1986, at Lurigancho, El Frontón and Santa Barbara prisons; press clippings reporting the events at those prisons; a report on the autopsies conducted on the bodies of the El Frontón inmates by physicians Augusto Yamada, Juan Hever Kruger and José Raez González; the military