7
Court. Also, the Court has deemed proven that there were other victims, specifically
Gustavo Caicedo Rodríguez, Diego Armando Martínez Contreras, Hugo Fernando Martínez
Contreras, Jaime Riaño Colorado, Omar Patiño Vaca, Eliécer Martínez Vaca, Enrique
Pinzón López, Jorge Pinzón López, Luis Eduardo Pinzón López, José Alberto Pinzón López,
Edwin Morales, Uriel Garzón, Ana Beiba Ramírez and Manuel Arévalo, who have been
individually identified and whom the State does not include in its statement (supra paras.
96.51 and 96.52 and infra para. 254). Likewise, the State’s intention to limit the victims
of the instant case to the persons identified “in the final criminal and disciplinary
proceedings” and to “those who prove under domestic law that they are victims” is not
acceptable. In accordance with the basic principle of law regarding the international
responsibility of the State according to which the States must fulfill their international
treaty obligations in good faith (pacta sunt servanda), the State cannot validly resort to
domestic reasons to avoid answering for the international responsibility already
acknowledged before this Court.
12.
That the Court has processed the instant case in all its stages, and within
such framework, the parties had different opportunities to furnish and submit
arguments, information and evidence, based on which the Tribunal has delivered the
Judgment on the merits and reparations. The State based said request on the
documentation tendered between the years 1999 and 2002, which was already in the
State’s possession before the case was brought before the Court, before the answer
to the petition and before the moment the State forwarded to the Tribunal said
evidence to facilitate adjudication of the case during the merits stage. In the
Judgment, the Tribunal appreciated the proven willingness of the State to cooperate
by providing the names of those persons, which entailed admitting that they are
victims of the massacre, and based on this the Court set the appropriate
compensations.10 The State cannot validly allege, in this procedural stage, where
compliance with the Judgment is being monitored, that there are no grounds for the
reparations ordered in favor of the two persons mentioned inasmuch as, despite the
fact that the State held information that it now presents, it mentioned, in the merits
stage before this Court, that Messrs. Omar Patiño Vaca and Eliécer Martínez Vaca
were fully identified victims of the facts of Mapiripán.
13.
That the Tribunal notes that, at present, there are doubts about the way in
which these persons died or disappeared, according to subsequent conclusions of the
Attorney General’s Office. Nevertheless, the Court recalls that the characteristics of
the massacre and the inefficacy of the internal investigations, determined in the
Judgment itself, precisely led to the lack of full identification of the victims. Based on
the foregoing, this Tribunal dismisses the request made by the State, which shall
comply with the reparations ordered in favor of the next-of-kin of Messrs. Omar
Patiño Vaca and Eliécer Martínez Vaca. Even in the event that it is possible to
effectively and irrefutably prove that a person declared victim in a judgment is not a
victim, it falls upon the State to effectively pay the compensatory amounts ordered
in his favor or in favor of his next-of-kin, considering that the act of acknowledgment
of international responsibility of the State gave rise to an adequate expectation of
the beneficiaries to receive reparations.
*
*
10
*
Cf. Case of the “Maripirán Massacre” V. Colombia, supra nota 8, para. 254.