4 7. On November 29, 2007, the Court ordered that 13 witnesses and three expert witnesses proposed by the Commission, the representatives, and the State submit statements made before notary public (affidavits), and the parties were given the opportunity to present their respective observations. The Court also convened the InterAmerican Commission, the representatives and the State to a public hearing to receive the statements of five witnesses, and also the final oral arguments on the preliminary objections and on possible merits, reparations and costs.3 Subsequently, the representatives requested “a change in the way that the testimony of Daniel Zúñiga and Janeth Rovetto would be received” because the former was a public employee and had stated that he was “afraid for his personal safety and his job security, and therefore did not want to testify in public,” but rather by means of an affidavit. Based on “this supervening fact,” the representatives asked that the testimony of Janeth Rovetto, whose testimony the Court had required by affidavit, be received during the public hearing. The parties were given the possibility of presenting their observations in this regard. On December 19, 2007, after having considered these observations, the President partially modified the Order of November 29, 2007, and decided that Daniel Zúñiga would testify by means of a statement before notary public and that the failure of Mr. Zúñiga to appear at the public hearing did not justify changing the way in which the Court had required Ms. Rovetto to testify.4 The public hearing was held on January 29 and 30, 2008, during the Court’s seventy-eighth regular session.5 8. On March 3, 2008, the parties presented their final written arguments. 9. On June 23, 2008, the representatives submitted a copy of a journalistic investigation published on June 21, 22 and 23, 2008, in the La Prensa newspaper in Panama, regarding the alleged “context of grave human rights violations during the military dictatorship […],” in relation to the present case. III PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS 10. When presenting its answer to the application, the State filed three preliminary objections: (a) “inadmissibility of the application owing to the failure to exhaust domestic remedies”; (b) lack of competence of the Court ratione temporis, and (c) lack of competence of the Court ratione materiae. The Court will examine these three preliminary objections in the order they were presented. A) Failure to exhaust domestic remedies 11. In the answer to the application, the State argued that the requirement to exhaust domestic remedies had not been complied with for two reasons. First, the State indicated that the alleged victim’s next of kin had not exhausted domestic remedies because “they 3 Order issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on November 29, 2007. 4 Order issued by the President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on December 19, 2007. 5 The following persons were present during the public hearing: (a) for the Inter-American Commission: Paolo Carozza and Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, Delegates, and Juan Pablo Albán A. and Christina Cerna, advisers; (b) for the representatives: Soraya Long, Gisela De León and Marcela Martino, CEJIL lawyers, and (c) for the State: Jorge Federico Lee, Agent; Iana Quadri de Ballard, Deputy Agent; Nisla Lorena Aparicio, Alternate Representative of the Republic of Panama before the Organization of American States; Luis Ernesto Vergara, Ambassador of Panama to Costa Rica; Luis Gómez, Lawyer of the Legal Affairs Secretariat of the Attorney General’s Office; Rogelio Naranjo, Legal Adviser, and Sophia Astrid Lee Bonilla, Legal Adviser.