Convention. Consequently, the Commission decided to notify the parties, make public this admissibility report, and include it in the annual report. II. PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE COMMISSION 5. The Commission received the initial petition on March 14, 2007, which was registered with number 298-07. 6. On July 16, 2007, the Commission forwarded the pertinent parts of the petition to the State and, pursuant to its Rules of Procedure, requested it to submit its response within a period of two months. 7. On February 14, 2008, the Commission received a communication from the petitioners requesting the application of Article 37.3 of its Rules of Procedure. 8. At the date this report was approved, the Venezuelan State had not responded to the petition. III. PROCESSING OF PRECAUTIONARY AND PROVISIONAL MEASURES 9. On October 18, 2002, the IACHR granted precautionary measures on behalf ofLuís Enrique Uzcátegui Jiménez, brother of Néstor José Uzcátegui Jiménez, who was killed on January 1, 2001, allegedly by Falcón State police agents. According to the request submitted to the IACHR, Mr. Uzcátegui was the victim of death threats for having organized a committee of relatives of victims of alleged extrajudicial executions by members of the police. In light of new incidents that aggravated the beneficiary’s security situation and of the fact that the State did not take the necessary measures to comply with the precautionary measures, on November 25, 2002, the IACHR asked the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to order the adoption of provisional measures. The Court granted that request on November 27, 2002. 10. The Court has been ratifying the measures through judgments on February 20, 2003, December 2, 2003, and May 4, 2005. The provisional measures remain in force. IV. POSITION OF THE PARTIES A. Position of the petitioners 11. By way of context, the petitioners indicated that the practice of illegal and arbitrary detentions, followed by extrajudicial executions, is a phenomenon that has been denounced in Venezuela for more than a decade. The petitioners also indicated that said practice follows a pattern characterized by the fact that most of the deaths are attributed to the regional police forces, the victims are young men from lower social strata, there is a very high rate of impunity, and the acts are carried out following a modus operandi. 12. According to the petitioners, this modus operandi is summarized as: i) the presentation of the incident as a confrontation; ii) the alteration of the scene; iii) the transfer of the wounded by the same agents who assaulted the victim; iv) the abandonment of the victim –most often lifeless– at a public hospital; v) the use of official uniforms, weapons, and equipment; vi) the public discrediting or criminalization of the victim by claiming said person resisted the authorities or had criminal and/or police records; and vii) intimidation, threats, and even the murder of the eyewitnesses and the victim’s relatives. 13. Concerning the issue of extrajudicial executions in Falcón State, the place where the incidents occurred in this case, the petitioners indicate that in the year 2000 there was a restructuring of the police force from this state and elite police units were created. According 2