IV. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATION: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY 46. In its brief of September 2012, the State wrote that “to begin with, it is worth repeating that the Brazilian State acknowledges the violations committed against Vladimir Herzog.” It maintained that its argument that the petition was inadmissible did not mean that it was “questioning the gravity of the acts perpetrated against Vladimir Herzog. Nevertheless, the State still has to challenge the petitioners’ claims that the State has been negligent, that it has not acknowledged its responsibility and that it has not sought to redress the victims.” It also recognized “the need to more thoroughly investigate the circumstances and facts of Vladimir Herzog’s homicide, including the question of who committed those violations.” The State also notes that Herzog's death revealed grave violations of human rights committed against political prisoners during the military dictatorship. 47. Then, in its brief of August 2015, the State again emphasized that it had taken a series of measures through which it acknowledged, at the domestic level, its responsibility with respect to the arbitrary detention, torture and murder of journalist Vladimir Herzog by agents of the State on Army premises. Those measures, according to the State, included the pecuniary damages paid to Clarice Herzog, the journalist’s widow; the judgment handed down by the judicial branch in 1978 in which the federal government’s responsibility in these events was acknowledged; the facts established in the report published in 2007 containing the findings of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances (CEMDP) and those established in the final report presented by the National Truth Commission on December 10, 2014. It also underscored the three bills currently before Congress and the two cases before the Federal Supreme Court (STF) claiming non-compliance with a fundamental precept (ADPF) [“Arguição de Preceito Fundamental”], all seeking amendment of the Amnesty Law. Brazil also reported that pursuant to operative paragraphs 3 and 7 of the judgment delivered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Case of Gomes Lund et al. (“Guerrilha do Araguaia”) v. Brazil, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office had since adopted an institutional standard of “investigating and bringing criminal complaints against State agents involved in the serious human rights violations that occurred during the dictatorship.” 48. The State also observed that these measures demonstrate the “State’s firm resolve to make full reparations for the human rights violations claimed by the petitioners.” 49. In their brief of November 2014, the petitioners expressed appreciation for the State’s acknowledgment of responsibility in this international proceeding and asked the IACHR “to take these statements into consideration in its analysis of the merits of the present case.” Nevertheless, they stated that “it is self-evident that the various statements made by the Brazilian State in connection with its acknowledgement of responsibility in this case are not sufficiently clear. The State does not spell out which of the facts alleged by [the petitioners] it accepts as true, nor does not it specify for which violations of the rights of the victim and his next of kin it accepts blame.” 50. The Commission observes that although the State failed to specify precisely which facts it was admitting and which alleged violations it was acknowledging, its willingness to concede these facts is obvious from its acknowledgement of the events and the violations resulting from the arbitrary detention, torture and murder of journalist Vladimir Herzog. To this extent, the State‘s acknowledgement is its admission of these facts and a concession to the legal claims contained in the petition in this regard. The IACHR also observes that the State neither contested nor objected to the facts of the present case, which have been duly established. 51. As the Commission has stated on other occasions, acknowledgement of responsibility makes a positive contribution toward the course of this process, to the effectiveness of the principles that inspire the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights and the conduct to which States are bound in this matter. 52. Therefore, the IACHR considers that the dispute regarding the international State responsibility for the arbitrary detention, torture and murder of journalist Vladimir Herzog, perpetrated in the context of serious human rights violations against political prisoners during the military dictatorship, and 8