12. The States Parties to the American Convention have proclaimed and assumed the duty to acknowledge and guarantee these rights in favor of all people, without distinction, regardless of the fact that they are or not responsible for criminal acts. This is a fundamental principle of International Human Rights Law. The States themselves – that make up the collective guarantee in this matter—gave the Inter-American Court the sole and exclusive power to hear and decide on applications regarding facts, attributed to the States, that violate the rights and freedoms protected by that international treaty. That is its contentious jurisdiction. Not any other. When exercising the judicial protection of human rights, the Court must abide by the stipulations of the Convention, just as domestic courts must observe the regulations of the criminal system. 13. Within this indispensable and rigorous framework, whose excess would imply a violation, the Inter-American Court issues decisions regarding the facts that violate the Convention and that imply the State’s international responsibility, not on transgressions of different regulations that result in the responsibility of other subjects. This explains why the Court that issues convictions for violations to human rights does not also do so with regard to acts of terrorism, which are not within its jurisdiction, nor does it go into detail in the analysis of the same, which would imply a criminal proceeding foreign to its powers. It is important to mention that the State itself acknowledged that “it does not correspond to the Court’s jurisdiction to issue a ruling with regard to behaviors foreign and different to the State’s international responsibility, such as those of SL.” (Sendero Luminoso) 14. For that same reason, when the Inter-American Court refers to “victims” of illegal acts, it can only refer to those who have been the object of behaviors that violate the American Convention on Human Rights. It makes the assessments it can and must make, without incurring in others that it cannot or must not make and that are the responsibility of other instances, which must be addressed so they may make the decisions that correspond to them. It is true that victims, in an ample and general sense, are any person who suffers the loss or damage of a juridical good –life, integrity, liberty, property—as a consequence of an illegal behavior. If the latter corresponds to a violation of the American Convention, the classification of victim and the corresponding punishment correspond to the Inter-American Court. If it refers to the violation of criminal law, the classification and punishment correspond to other courts. 15. The State points out that the Court refers to certain people as members of “armed groups”, basin on the fact that the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation considers them members of a “terrorist subversive movement responsible for grave violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.” The Court has not varied at all the findings of the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. It leaves the assessment made by the latter unchanged. The terms that the Court uses –within the realm of its own jurisdiction and for the purposes of the procedures followed before it— do not seek to “reassess” what that Commission has observed pursuant to its institutional duties. 16. A judgment of the Inter-American Court must be based on the evidence of the violating acts of the Convention, from which the State’s responsibility derives. Even when the respondent State’s acknowledgment of the facts and its international responsibility does not determine, for itself, the Court’s judgment, it is obvious that it constitutes relevant evidence. In the matter that currently occupies us, there was an explicit and reiterated acknowledgment of the State with regard to the facts that 3