- 26 - 70. Based on the subsisting dispute, the Court finds it pertinent to analyze the scope and dimensions of the general obligations to respect and to ensure the rights to personal integrity and to life of Senator Cepeda Vargas, from the perspective of the obligations of prevention, protection and investigation in relation to these rights. A. THE OBLIGATIONS OF PREVENTION AND PROTECTION RIGHT TO LIFE OF SENATOR CEPEDA VARGAS IN RELATION TO THE 71. It is uncontested that Senator Manuel Cepeda Vargas was a political leader and member of the UP and PCC, and that he was also a social communicator who tended towards critical opposition. He was a member of the directorate of the said parties and was elected Representative to the Chamber of Congress for the period 1991-1994, and Senator of the Republic for the period 1994-1998. As a social communicator, Senator Cepeda sat on the Board and helped edit the weekly publication Voz, for which he wrote a political column for several years. 72. On August 9, 1994, at around 9 a.m., Senator Manuel Cepeda Vargas was murdered en route from his home to the Congress of the Republic. The Senator’s car was intercepted and the perpetrators fired several shots that killed him instantly. His escort reacted immediately firing his revolver several times unsuccessfully. Subsequently, the murderers abandoned their vehicle about a kilometer and a half from the site. At least two sergeants of the Colombian National Army took part in the execution and have been sentenced and convicted for the facts (infra para. 143). Other members of the Army and of paramilitary groups have been investigated although, to date, none of them has been found responsible (infra paras. 136 and 141 to 158). 73. The parties to this case have acknowledged that the motive for the murder of Senator Cepeda Vargas was his political activism in the opposition, which he exercised as a leader of the UP and the PCC, in his parliamentary activities as a Senator of the Republic, and in his publications as a social communicator.75 A.1 General situation of risk faced by Manuel Cepeda 74. According to the Ombudsman, the Patriotic Union was constituted as a political organization on May 28, 1985, as a result of a peace process between the National Secretariat of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (hereinafter the “FARC”) and the Government of President Belisario Betancur Cuartas,76 resulting in a pact known as the “Uribe Agreements” signed on March 28, 1984.77 As part of the peace agreement, 75 In the judgment of the Third Criminal Court of the Santafé de Bogotá Specialized Circuit delivering a guilty verdict, the judge stated: “[i]n this regard, the question that defines the matter is: why was Mr. Cepeda Vargas murdered? And the body of evidence provides us with the answer, because the accused have described […] how the act was in response to the fact that he was a “revolutionary”; moreover, it is well known that the deceased was the UP Senator and, as if this was not enough, his ideology, criticisms and accusations appeared in the publication, Voz.” Cf. Judgment handed down by the Third Criminal Court of the Santafé de Bogotá Specialized Circuit, in case No. 5393-3 on December 16, 1999 (evidence file, tome IV, attachment 31 to the application, folio 1763). 76 Cf. Report of the Ombudsman to the Government, the Congress and the Attorney General of the Nation entitled “Estudio de casos de homicidio de miembros de la Unión Patriótica y Esperanza, Paz y Libertad” (Report on cases of the murder of members of the Patriotic Union party and the Hope, Peace and Freedom party] of October 2002 (evidence file, tome III, attachment 1 to the application, folios 1213 to 1214). 77 Cf. Opinion provided before notary public (affidavit) by expert witness Eduardo Cifuentes Muñoz on January 7, 2010 (evidence file, tome XX, folios 8341 to 8381).