A. Arguments of the parties and the Commission 145. The Commission indicated that, “[i]n this case there were many errors in the collection of technical evidence from the first proceedings. For instance, the body of Carlos Luna was not officially removed until the day after his death, from the place where the wake was held. There is no evidence in the file that an autopsy or any other examination of the victim’s body was performed. There are no photographs of his body either […], the inspection was conducted the day after his murder, […] there is no evidence that the casings of the bullets fired were collected at the crime scene for subsequent scientific ballistic tests.” Similarly, the State failed to conduct tests and “follow investigation theories that [became] obvious from the collection of the first evidence during the early months of the investigation,” according to the international standards contained in the UN Manual for the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions. The Commission stressed that the investigations conducted by the State against the intellectual and material authors proved insufficient, adding that the indications of involvement by state officials were not properly investigated, and even less, there was no clarification of the link between Mr. Luna’s murder and his leadership role as a defender of the environment in his community. 146. Also, the Commission stated that the case was not complex and that a lack of due diligence was evident, a point that domestic authorities should have noted. Moreover, it pointed out that a complicated situation of insecurity existed for those involved in the criminal process, since “from the files it does not appear that the State had offered protection to the witnesses, including friends and family of Carlos Luna López, who reported having been threatened and harassed,” and “two judges were excused from hearing the case, one of them citing security reasons and the lack of State protection, [specifying that] [t]hese excuses coincid[ed] with the reopening of the investigation of those accused of being intellectual authors, [and that] there was no evidence in the file that the State had adopted security measures for the members of the judiciary involved in this case. 147. Finally, it indicated that the “investigation and the process [,] undertaken by the domestic criminal courts did not [represent] an effective remedy to guarantee, ¨within a reasonable period of time, the rights to a fair trial and judicial protection,” in breach of Articles 8 and 25 of the American Convention, which “creat[ed] a context of impunity for the acts of violence committed against the defenders of human rights and the environment in Honduras.” 148. The representatives agreed with the Commission’s arguments, and added that during the process the State did not act with due diligence since no basic actions were taken to determine who participated in the events investigated. 246 Moreover, the case had some aggravating circumstances due to the lack of guarantees of independence and impartiality of the Judges. The representatives added that “several people, including relatives of Mr. Luna, judges, prosecutors, the accused and a key witness in the case [of] Oscar Rodríguez Molina, mentioned threats made against them […]. However, no effective steps were taken to protect them or to investigate these acts. [Consequently] witness Oscar Rodríguez Molina was murdered in a maximum security unit of the National Penitentiary.” Moreover, they stated that, “Prosecutor Omar Menjívar had claimed that he was being threatened by Mr. [José Ángel] Rosa.” They concluded that the State did not act with due diligence, 246 Such as the inadequate management, lack of an [autopsy] on the body of Carlos Luna, failure to execute certain arrest warrants, and the lack of substantiation of possible lines of investigation from the existing evidence (File of the attachments to the Merits Report, pages 184 to 189). 45