2 "(...) Now I carry thy poor dust in my hands; but thou wert radiant, my child, when I sped the forth from home! Would that I had yielded up my breath, ere, with these hands, I stole thee away, and sent thee to a strange land, and rescued the from death! (...)But now, an exile from home and fatherland, thou hast perished miserably, far from thy sister (...). at the hands of strangers, hapless one, thou hast had those rites, and so art come to us, a little dust in a narrow urn. Ah, woe is me for my nursing long ago, so vain, that I oft bestowed on thee with loving toil I For thou wast never thy mother's darling so much as mine; nor was any in the house thy nurse but I; and by thee I was ever called 'sister. But now all this hath vanished in a day, with thy death; like a whirlwind, thou hast swept all away with thee. (...). (...)Ah me, ah me! O piteous dust! Alas, thou dear one, sent on a dire journey, how hast undone me,- undone me indeed, O brother mine! Therefore take me to this thy home, me who am as nothing, to thy nothingness, that I may dwell with thee henceforth below; for when thou wert on earth, we shared alike; and now I fain would die, that I may not be parted from thee in the grave. For I see that the dead have rest from pain.."2 5. The luck of Irene, sister of Damião Ximenes-Lopes, was worse than that of Electra´s: she also fainted when she knew that her brother, who left home to be taken care of by social “services” in a “resting” home, died there, and she also remembered her affection for him: "(...) As his older sister, in a way I took care of him, (...) I accompanied him, took him to my house, visited him. (...) My relationship with him was the best possible one, more than that of a sister, a little bit of a mother too. (...) I saw him already in the coffin, prepared to be buried. (...) I could see several signs of torture. (...) He had been beaten up. (...) [All this] shocked me, terrified me, I had so many nightmares (...). I was terrified (...). I felt pain in the chest, but it was not a heart breaking pain, it was soul breaking. (...) [What happened] even today has effect, (...) six years of desperation for justice. (...) I started a big struggle for justice (...). I had three years of depression, (...) I traveled a lot looking for justice (...).” 3 6. Irene soon and effectively decided, beside the grave of her beloved brother, to depart determined to find public justice, as it is the usual practice at her time, our time, which so far, with the adoption of this Judgment of the Inter-American Court, she had not found. As she said before this Court, "(...) On the day my brother was buried in the cemetery, I kneeled on his coffin and sworn that my soul would not rest until justice had been done, and I have been looking for justice for six years. (...) Now my soul can rest, I haven’t left my brother’s death unpunished, I claim for justice."4 This Judgment rendered by the Inter-American Court, to be duly fulfilled by the Brazilian State, vindicates her suffering and satisfies her thirst for justice. It also reveals the relevance of international jurisdiction in our days. 7. Electra’s and Irene’s stories are totally different, and they took place in times separated by centuries. Nevertheless, they present the tragedy of human condition as a common element, before the persistence of indifference and cruelty, stressed in 164 . http://drama.eserver.org/plays/classical/sophocles/electra.txt . Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Transcript of Public Hearing of November 30, 2005 and December 1, 2005 in the case of Ximenes-Lopes v. Brasil, pp. 23 and 27-28. 165 4 . Ibid., p. 28, and regarding the liability of the State, cf. p. 32.