4.
Several briefs were presented to the Court with regard to the request for
Interpretation of the Judgment presented by the State. In one of its three briefs (all of
07.31.2007) presented to the Court, the Legal Representative and common intervener of
the victims (Mrs. Mónica Feria Tinta) observed that
"A considerable number of victims represented by this legal
representation is made up by families of people who were never detained,
Peruvian citizens who have never been submitted to any criminal
proceedings, and taxpayers as well as any other citizen, and well as direct
victims of the attack to pavilions 1A and 4B who were acquitted or
pardoned in the proceedings that led to their arrest and others who having
been convicted are not members of Sendero Luminoso. Therefore, this
group of victims does not consider relevant the considerations presented
by the Distinguished Peruvian State with regard to a minority of people
who would be members of Sendero Luminoso, on behalf of who their legal
representatives must speak,. (...) The Court’s Judgment in the case of the
Miguel Castro Castro Prison is the affirmation of the recta ratio over a logic
that seeks to scorn the fact that there are rules of law also in times of war
and that there are rules of jus cogens that are non-revocable even in the
most extreme case of an armed conflict and that they do not fall upon
principles of reciprocity.
(...) Among the relatives and next of kin of the prisoners murdered
or who suffered the attack, represented by the undersigned, there is all
type of people, including members of the Peruvian police force. Does this
in any way help the Peruvian State understand that the effects of that
occurred to the group of people affected by the massacre that took place in
the Castro Castro Prison reached all sectors of the Peruvian society and
therefore the insistence on stigmatizing said group of people as ‘terrorists’,
which we have seen reflected in some sectors, is unbecoming to reality."
(paras. 7-8)
5.
At the same time, the attorneys of the “Canto Grande 92 Group" of victims
(Messrs. Douglass Cassel and Sean O'Brien) stated in their brief of 08.01.2007, that the
State’s request for interpretation referred to entities and people who were not
participating in the present proceedings (p. 3), and that the condemnation by the State of
terrorism must be done through “judicial proceedings, pursuant to the principles of the
rule of law.” (p. 8) They recalled, in this sense, that the Inter-American Court, in the case
of Lori Berenson versus Peru (Judgment of 11.25.2004, para. 91), was very clear in its
“categorical rejection” to “terrorist violence – whoever its main protagonists – that may
harm individuals and society as a whole (p. 11);” likewise, they recalled that the InterAmerican Court, in its Judgment (of 11.25.2003, para. 134(8)-(13)) in the case of Myrna
Mack Chang versus Guatemala, in its “expansion of the historical context” of the case,
“did not seek to condemn any entity or person absent from the process.” (p. 4)
6.
On its part, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, in its brief of
08.01.2007, observed that the State’s request for interpretation refers to aspects that
“were not the object of the case, as acknowledged by the appellant itself," (para. 5) and
it added that the Court’s Judgment in the present case of the Castro Castro Prison (paras.
424-428) established clearly that “the compensations must be handed over to their
beneficiaries." (para. 21) Finally, the Court received a brief (on 05.11.2007) from the
Institute of Legal Defense (IDL) and the National Human Rights Coordinator (CNDH), in
their quality of amici curiae, presenting new arguments to its consideration. They
observed that “the classification as a victim of the violation of human rights does not
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