287. In its answering brief, the State indicated that the presumed victims had not asked the Court to appoint a public defender and that it was the Court itself that proposed this possibility to the presumed victims, who accepted this suggestion, after which the defenders were appointed. The State also indicated that it “did not question the appointment of actual defenders and recognizes that the Court is competent to proceed as indicated in the Rules for the Operation of the Fund and in the Memorandum of Understanding.” Nevertheless, it indicated that “if the Court decided motu proprio to suggest to the presumed victims the possibility that they could be represented by public defenders, and if the Court then requests AIDEF to appoint these defenders and if, finally, the Court decides to accept the appointment of the said defenders, the State of Bolivia has not had any participation whatsoever in these decisions, and it would be unfair to then require the State to cover the expenses arising from this representation, because it has no legal obligation to do so.” 288. The State continued by indicating that, “if the defenders do not live in the country of residence of the presumed victims, and incur in travel, communication and other similar expenses in order to contact and interview those they are representing, […] if a violation of the Convention is declared, the expenses in which these defenders incur should not be charged to the State,” because if the Court and AIDEF did not foresee that the appointment would create greater expenses that the appointment of defenders in the country of residence of the presumed victims, this cannot be attributed to the State. It added that “it is logical to suppose that, in Chile, actual country of residence of the Pacheco Tineo family, there are numerous public defenders and lawyers, experts in human rights, who could have assumed [their] defense,” and that, in this case, there was no incompatibility for a public defender of the defendant country to take on cases against his own country, “so that there was no incompatibility or urgent need to appoint lawyers who were not Chilean.” Accordingly, the State argued that it “should not have to pay costs arising from decisions of the AIDEF and the Court that were entirely discretional,” and therefore asked that it should not be asked to pay the expenses generated by the defenders of the presumed victims under the heading of costs and expenses or under any other heading. 289. Subsequently, in a note of the Secretariat of August 29, 2013, the State was given the procedural opportunity to present its observations on the report on the disbursements made in application of the Victims’ Legal Assistance Fund. In its brief with observations, and prior to this, in its answering brief, the State indicated that: (a) it was not the presumed victims who asked to benefit from the application of the Legal Assistance Fund in the first place; (b) the Court and the AIDEF should have considered appointing defenders who resided in the country where the presumed victims live, an aspect that would have reduced the expenditure arising from the travel and accommodation of the inter-American defender; (c) the presumed victims did not indicate which aspects of their defense required access to this Fund, nor did they prove the lack of financial resources to hire private defense counsel; (d) apparently the Pacheco Tineo couple do not, in fact, lack financial resources; (e) the amounts included for accommodation and food are not in line with the amounts that the State provides to its public servants, which are very much lower than the amounts established by the Court, and (f) regarding the honoraria of expert witness Uribe, that several of the elements contained in the reports have the same wording as the statements of the presumed victims, so that the said reports of the expert witness lack professional objectivity and impartiality. 290. According to the information in the report on the disbursement made in this case, these amount to US$9,564.63 (nine thousand five hundred and sixty-four United States dollars and sixty three cents). It is for the Court, in application of article 5 of the Rules of the Fund, to assess the admissibility of ordering the defendant State to reimburse the Legal Assistance Fund the disbursements made. 291. In this regard, the Court reiterates the provisions of the Order of its President of February 19, 2013, indicating that the request to access the Assistance Fund was made at the appropriate time in the pleadings and motions brief, and that the inter-Americana defenders had 84