A. The petitioners 8. The petitioners allege that the State of Guatemala has failed to fulfill its duty to investigate with due diligence the murder of the human rights defender, Florentín Gudiel Ramos, and acts of intimidation against his daughter, Makrina Gudiel Álvarez, also a human rights defender. 9. They maintain that Florentín Gudiel Ramos, a carpenter by trade and a demobilized member of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit (URNG) was engaged in supporting community education in Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa as well as housing projects for demobilized combatants developed by the Guillermo Toriello Foundation. In addition to having been declared an “anonymous hero” by the United National Development Programme in 2002, along with his family he was seeking justice for the forced disappearance of his son, José Miguel Gudiel Álvarez (alleged victim in case 12.590 “Diario Militar” before the IACHR). In 2003, the community appointed him Chair of the Education Committee of the Self Managed School. Regarding Makrina Gudiel Álvarez, the petitioners indicate that she was organizing the municipality’s Community Development Councils, defining priority projects, and supporting social audit projects and education in the community. 10. They allege that on December 20, 2004, at about ten in the morning, Mr. Gudiel was riding his bicycle from the municipal headquarters of Santa Lucía de Cotzumalguapa to his home after handling some business and was three hundred meters from his house when, according to witness testimony, he was intercepted in the roadway by two bicycles and a grey pickup truck with tinted glass windows. They maintain that armed men in the pickup shot him in the back to knock him off the bicycle and later got out of the truck, shot him in the forehead, and then shot him once more for good measure in the left temple. According to the petitioners, nine-millimeter hollow point bullets were used. 11. The petitioners state that on the night of the same day, at the wake for Mr. Gudiel, an alleged seven-member military patrol led by an alleged kaibil1 arrived in a white pickup without plates and set up in front of the house taking attack positions to intimidate those there and left shortly thereafter. During the next nine days, those who participated in Catholic rites began to receive threats telling them they would suffer the same fate. The petitioners state that some days later a pickup with armed men wearing Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) t-shirts positioned itself in front of the house during novena prayers. Messages have been sent by various means to Mr. Gudiel’s family, particularly Makrina Gudiel, indicating that the threats are meant for her and she should flee. 12. The petitioners allege that the initial investigative activities produced indications of a planned action.They point out that there was no robbery, so that the motive for the murder was related to the activities of Mr. Gudiel and his daughter. They say that there is a history of death threats and intimidation against Makrina Gudiel. They indicate that even though the authorities were informed from the outset that this was very likely a political murder, the authorities have never taken this fact into account, stating that this is just one more case of ordinary violence. 13. The petitioners indicate that they gave the authorities the names of the potential masterminds of Mr. Gudiel’s murder, but the only measures taken to verify that information were to ask the Citizen’s Registry for identification data on those persons and to request a report from the Weapons and Ammunitions Control Department of the Ministry of Defense regarding whether those individuals have a license to bear or own firearms, the answer to which was negative. 14. They report that although the State indicates that it has carried out various investigative procedures, through the Office of the Public Prosecutor, those procedures have not helped to 1 The petitioners refer to the kaibiles as an elite fighting force of the Guatemalan Army, which the Commission for Historical Clarification has accused of having committed serious human rights violations during the period of internal conflict. 2