3 justice had been done, and I have been looking for justice for six years. (...) Now my soul can rest, I haven’t left my brother’s death unpunished, I claim for justice."166 This Judgment rendered by the Inter-American Court, to be duly fulfilled by the Brazilian State, vindicates her suffering and satisfies her thirst for justice. It also reveals the relevance of international jurisdiction in our days. 7. Electra’s and Irene’s stories are totally different, and they took place in times separated by centuries. Nevertheless, they present the tragedy of human condition as a common element, before the persistence of indifference and cruelty, stressed in the treatment of the more vulnerable ones, and also the desperate and despairing search for justice (then private, today public). They unfold the inscrutable presence of tragedy in the mysteries around life, which some have tried to simplify characterizing it as fate. Human suffering hopelessly continues to be a sad trace of human condition along the centuries. With particular foresight, Sophocles warned, already in the V Century B.C., in his Oedipus the King167, that we must never say that someone is happy until the time he has overcome the extreme limit of a painless life. 8. And the evolution from private justice (of the antique Greek) to public justice (of the “modern” and “post-modern”) seems to progress unfinished, acquiring a mainly ritualistic feature, contaminated by the erosion and “outsourcing” of the public services and by a merely formalist justice. To this we must add the regrettable transformation of public assets as health and education into goods. Damião Ximenes-Lopes had a violent death when he was entrusted to the public social “services” and when he was confined to a “resting” home, the one in Guararapes. 9. The violent death of defenseless Damião, who was looking for medical treatment, had a devastating effect in the life not only of his sister Irene, but also in the life of his next of kin. According to Irene’s account before the Court, Cosme, Damião´s twin brother, considering the proximity of the bond with the victimized brother, “was in shock” when he learned about Damião´s death. However, she added, “until today Cosme does not know the details of the torture and the violence; we omitted them because that would cause too much suffering to him and we wanted to preserve his health.”168 In other words, he was duly preserved from the truth, which under certain circumstances proves to be necessary, as the tragedy of knowledge of the human condition may be sometimes unbearable, mainly for those more vulnerable or sensitive. 10. The mother’s life was “completely ruined”, she is always remembering the death of her son Damião, “until today she is depressed and says that she wants to die.”169 Mother and father were already separated, but they have preserved the family bonds of affection with the children; the father, immersed in “deep suffering” 166 . Ibid., p. 28, and regarding the liability of the State, cf. p. 32. 167 . In the piercing final phrase - verses 1529-1530. 168 . Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Transcript of Public Hearing..., op. cit. supra n. (3), p. 27. 169 . Ibid., p. 28.