6. On October 10, 1996, the Commission held a working meeting with the parties. The State presented communications on June 16, 1997 and November 30, 1999. The petitioners did so on March 23, 2000 and March 26, 2003. The Commission duly forwarded those communications to the other parties. 7. On July 31, 2003, the Commission informed the Guatemalan State and the petitioners that "given that during the processing of the instant petition the parties had had ample opportunities to provide information regarding the complaint and arguments regarding both its admissibility and merits," it had decided to apply Article 37.3 of the Rules of Procedure in force at the time. Consequently, the IACHR deferred discussion of admissibility until the debate and decision on the merits. 8. The petitioners submitted their additional observations on November 24, 2003. Those observations were relayed to the State on December 1, 2003. The State submitted its additional observations on Monday, December 11, 2006. Subsequently, the IACHR received communications from the State and from the petitioners, which it forwarded to the other party. III. POSITION OF THE PARTIES A. Position of the petitioners 9. The petitioners accused the State of responsibility for the disappearance, torture, and subsequent murder of Alejandro Yovany Gómez Virula in March 1995. They said that those events had occurred because Mr. Gómez had been a trade unionist working at the time as Secretary of Finance of Unión Sindical de Trabajadores de Guatemala (UNSITRAGUA). They said he had played a strategically important part in a labor dispute between a cross-border assembly enterprise and its former workers. They stated that, in that context, Mr. Gómez Virula had been deprived of his liberty on March 13, 1995 by unknown individuals and that on March 19, 1995 his body had been found in a gully in Zone 18 of Guatemala City. They added that at that time both relatives and the Trade Union itself had filed complaints regarding his disappearance. 10. The petitioners added that the acts against Mr. Gómez took place at a time of serious acts of harassment against trade union activists by both private enterprises and state agents. They also said that at that time such violations were not investigated and therefore went unpunished. The petitioners stressed that the context referred to has been abundantly corroborated by both internal agencies and international organizations. Specifically, they reported that eight trade unionists of UNSITRAGUA were murdered in 1995 in circumstances that appeared to point to industrial/political motives. They said that Mr. Gómez had been the second UNSITRAGUA trade union activist to have been forcibly "disappeared" and murdered that month. 11. With respect to admissibility, the petitioners invoked the exception established in Article 46.2.b of the American Convention. They argued that they had reported the disappearance of Mr. Gómez, and his death when his body was found. They said that, even so, no serious effort had been made to investigate the case. That had meant, they said, that the judicial file had been archived. 12. On the merits, they claimed that the State is responsible for violating Mr. Gómez's rights to life, personal integrity, and personal liberty. They said that Mr. Gómez had been forcibly disappeared, tortured, and finally murdered. 13. They pointed out that, due to the failure to investigate, it could not be determined whether the State had directly participated in the disappearance, torture, and subsequent murder of Mr. Gómez. Nonetheless, they claimed, Mr. Gómez's death revealed many of the features typical of extrajudicial executions perpetrated by State agents during the armed conflict in Guatemala. They stated that even if it did not participate directly, the State was responsible for not having guaranteed those rights, because it had not taken the steps needed to prevent such acts from occurring. 14. As regards the right to freedom of association, the petitioners pointed out that, following his forced disappearance, Mr. Gómez had been prevented from exercising that right. They stated that Mr. 2