71 179. In view of the violent circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Damião Ximenes-Lopes (supra para. 112(11)), this Court considers that it is necessary in the investigation of any violent death to observe similar guidelines to those in the United Nations Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions. The government authorities conducting an investigation must, inter alia: (a) identify the victim; (b) recover and preserve evidentiary material related to the death to aid in any potential prosecution of those responsible; (c) identify possible witnesses and obtain statements from them concerning the death; (d) determine the cause, manner, location and time of death, as well as any pattern or practice that may have brought about the death; (e) distinguish between natural death, accidental death, suicide and homicide. In addition, it is necessary to conduct a thorough investigation of the crime scene and rigorous autopsy examinations, and analyses of human remains must be conducted by competent professionals, following the most appropriate procedures. 134 180. Initially, in spite of the evidence of the ill-treatment against Mr. Damião Ximenes-Lopes, physician Francisco Ivo de Vasconcelos, from the Casa de Reposo de Guararapes, who examined the alleged victim after his death, diagnosed the cause of the death as “cardio respiratory arrest” (supra para. 112(12)). 181. With reference to the above-mentioned examination, on January 11, 2000 physician Francisco Ivo de Vasconcelos stated before the Coordinadora Municipal de Control, Evaluación y Auditoria de la Secretaría de Salud y Asistencia Social) that the body of the patient “was lying on the floor, where [he] conducted the primary examination in an attempt to establish the cause of [his] death[...].” In addition, in his statement of October 11, 2000 before Third Chamber of the Trial Court in and for Sobral, he stated that he "went on to investigate the possible cause of the death, and found no signs of an object that may have choked the patient, there were no signs of strangulation or traumatism; neither was there external bleeding, so [the deponent] wrote in the death certificate ‘cardio respiratory arrest’. [The patient] had no external injury or excoriation, bleeding had ceased, there was no hematoma in his scalp, and there were no signs of strangulation. [The deponent] had opened the alleged victim’s buccal cavity to check for any object, and then [he had] asked the nurse to notify the victim’s relatives of his death and prepare the documents[...]." 182. This Court considers that, in examining the body of the alleged victim, the above-mentioned physician Francisco Ivo de Vasconcelos, failed to adopt appropriate measures since, as he himself asserted in his statement, he examined the body and failed to inform that it had external injuries, which were later described in the autopsy examination report, even though he knew of the circumstances of violence in the Casa de Reposo de Guararapes and of the specific conditions in which the alleged victim was kept (supra para. 112(9) and 112(56)). It follows from the abovementioned statements that in his examination the physician ruled out possible causes of death, but failed to provide grounds for the diagnosis of death due to cardio respiratory arrest and ignored the presence of injuries; therefore, he had to require that an autopsy examination be performed in order to conduct a thorough examination of the body of the alleged victim. 134 Cf. Case of Baldeón-García, supra note4, para. 96; Case of Pueblo Bello Massacre, supra note 25, para. 177; and Case of Mapiripán Massacre, supra note 21, para. 224. See also, Véase también, United Nations Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, Doc. E/ST/CSDHA/12 (1991).