32 identify the victim; b) to recover and maintain the evidentiary material related to the facts; c) to identify the possible witnesses and obtain their statements; d) to determine the cause, manner, place and moment in which the crime was committed, as well as any other pattern or practice that could have caused it; and e) in case of deaths, to establish a difference among natural, accidental, suicidal deaths and murder. c) Effectiveness of the procedure 107. With respect to the effectiveness of the judicial proceedings initiated by the State, the Court points out that within one year of the occurrence of the facts, in the military criminal preliminary stage, there were only five statements rendered by militaries who allegedly witnessed the events. The scene of the crime was not investigated and there was not autopsy of the body. The body was only removed, which resulted in the impossibility of collecting important signs to prove, among other facts, the inexistence of confrontation and the shots. The procedural case file got lost and all the proceedings carried out by the Criminal Penal Court Nº 34 between 1992 and 1998 were oriented to the reconstruction of the proceeding, without submission of new evidence. Finally, up to the moment of the transfer of the procedure to the ordinary jurisdiction, it became evident that there were large periods of procedural inactivity. 108. In addition, even though the State tried to look for the lost file, there was no evidence that proved that an investigation was carried out in order to determine the circumstances and the responsible for such loss. Likewise, the ordinary judicial authorities initiated the reconstruction of the lost case file not until May, 1992 and they could not reconstruct key proceedings, such as the minutes of the body removal and the registry regarding the weapons warehouse, allegedly found in the victim’s power. 109. By the same token, the State did only investigated the murder of the victim, and left unclarified other crime related facts, such as the illegal detention of Mr. Escué Zapata, the body injuries, the illegal search in his residence, the cooperation of former soldiers, the concealment of facts and the alleged participation of indigenous and land owners in the crime. The victim’s relatives and some of the militaries who participated in the mission that detained Mr. Escué Zapata rendered their statement of the events. Notwithstanding, the judicial authorities did not proceed to investigate these allegations and the same are still unresolved. 110. However, the Court acknowledges that the State, especially through the National Unit of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Nation, as from the year 2002, has started to carry out several proceedings with the purpose of investigating the facts and punishing the responsible. Thus, according to the statement rendered by the witness Yolanda Prado, non- disputed fact, it has been ordered, approximately, 25 judicial inspections and “near 55 statements.”106 Likewise, according to recent information provided by the State, it was possible to determine the individualization, capture, deprivation of liberty and prosecution of the alleged responsible.107 106 Cf. Statement rendered by Yolanda Prado Ruiz in the public hearing held before the Inter-American Court on January 29 and 30, 2007; provision for the determination of the merits from the preliminary investigation, of September 15, 2006 (Record of Appendixes to the answer of the complaint, Prosecutor’s File, Folder 5, pages 3037 to 3084). 107 Cf. Provision for the determination of merits from the preliminary investigation, of September 152006 (record of Appendixes to the answer of the complaint, Prosecutor’s file, Folder 5, pages 3037 to 3084); Resolution of the specialized Prosecutor's Office 21 of the National Unit of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, of January 12, 2007 (Records of the merits, Volume III, pages 681 and 682); official letter from the criminal investigation Nº. 1479 UDH to the criminal judges of the Circuit (records of the merits, Volume IV, pages 1171