59
a)
The detention conditions to which the alleged victim was subjected
(similar to those in the Loayza Tamayo and Cantoral Benavides cases)
constituted cruel and inhuman treatment, which caused suffering and mental
anxiety: pain, humiliation, impotence, uncertainty and frustration, owing to
the unlawfulness of her conviction and her detention;
b)
The alleged victim’s conditions improved in 1997, after the adoption of
Supreme Decree 005-97, which adopted the “Regulation of the Daily Regime
and Progressivism of the Treatment of Prisoners Processed and Sentenced for
the Crime of Terrorism and/or Treason.” However, this has not meant that it
meets international standards;
c)
As of March 1996, the alleged victim is in the same prison where María
Elena Loayza Tamayo was confined. Only, after 2000, when the democratic
transition Government took office, did her situation change and improve;
d)
The new trial against the alleged victim does not meet the minimum
conditions of due process and constitutes cruel and inhuman treatment “by
increasing [her] state [of] uncertainty, and also that of [her] family owing to
acts attributable to the State”;
e)
Even thought penalties may not transcend the offender, the “faceless”
judges inferred that the alleged victim’s was guilty of collaboration with
terrorism, because she was the wife of someone whom the State presumed or
presumes to be a member of a terrorist organization; and
f)
The next of kin of Mrs. De La Cruz Flores (her mother, her children and
her siblings) constitute “secondary victims” given the detention, trial,
conviction and re-opening of the proceeding against the alleged victim, owing
to their impotence in the face of injustice, the humiliating treatment they
have endured, and the deterioration in their finances.
Arguments of the Commission
120.
The Inter-American Commission did not refer to the alleged violation of
Article 5 of the American Convention argued by the representatives.
Arguments of the State
121.
The State did not refer to the alleged violation of the right to humane
treatment contained in Article 5 of the American Convention.
Considerations of the Court
122.
First, the Court will refer to the possibility of incorporating rights other than
those included in the application. This Court has already accepted that the alleged
victims’ representatives and/or their next of kin may invoke different rights from
those invoked by the Commission in its application.104 In this regard, the Court has
considered that alleged victims are “holders of all the rights embodied in the
104
Cf. Case of the “Juvenile Reeducation Institute”, supra note 1, para. 125; Case of the Gómez
Paquiyauri brothers, supra note 27, para. 179; Case of Maritza Urrutia. Judgment of November 27, 2003.
Series C No. 103, para. 134.
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