opinion of Carlos Bacigalupo that, even during cremations, which constitute scenarios when the temperature of the fire and the time that the corpse is exposed to this is absolutely controlled, “at the end of the cremation process, the body has not disintegrated completely, it is broken up, the soft tissue has disappeared, but the bones and the teeth remain,” so that after a corpse has been burned “the remains are crushed and ground up so that the ashes […] can be delivered to the family.” 465 Consequently, the Court considers it very unlikely that precisely the corpses of the presumed victims, most of them cafeteria employees, were destroyed completely by the action of the fire, and that no evidence (for example, bones or teeth) has remained of any of them. Furthermore, the Court underlines that, since the events took place, no evidence has arisen of this possibility, beyond the fact that the corpses of the presumed victims had not been recovered when the work of removing and identifying corpses concluded. 296. Likewise, this Court finds that there is scant possibility that the remains of the victims are among the corpses that were erroneously identified. The Court considers that it would be a rather unreasonable coincidence that the said errors affected precisely the eight cafeteria employees who continue disappeared. Moreover, this would signify ignoring the other evidence that has arisen about their departure from the Palace alive and their presumed forced disappearance. 297. The Court also observes that the State’s expert witness indicated that other mass graves may exist where victims from the Palace of Justice may have been buried and affirmed that the grave in the South Cemetery was not adequately guarded, so that it could have been altered. 466 In this regard, the Court notes that, according to the testimony of Carlos Valdés who, at the time of the events, was Head of the Criminalistics Division of the CTI of the Prosecutor General’s Office and directed the exhumation procedures, before the exhumation work began, inquiries and assessments were made based on which “they eliminated the possibility” that other mass graves existed and concluded that “that grave had not been disturbed or altered.” 467 298. Therefore, despite its conclusions with regard to Ana Rosa Castiblanco Torres and Norma Constanza Esguerra Forero (infra paras. 317 and 320), the Court finds that there is no evidence that the disappeared victims died in the Palace of Justice as a result of the crossfire or of the fire that occurred during the events. A.2.j) The failure to clarify the facts 299. In this case, the State acknowledged its responsibility by omission for the failure to investigate these facts. The Court will make a comprehensive analysis of the shortcomings and delays in their investigation in Chapter XI infra. Nevertheless, in this section, it should be emphasized that, despite the different investigations and judicial proceedings that have been instituted, the State has been unable to provide a final and official version of what happened to the presumed victims, and has not provided adequate information to disprove the different indications that have emerged concerning the forced disappearance of most of the victims. The only point about which there is no dispute is that the disappeared victims were in the Palace of Justice and, following the operation to retake the building, they have not appeared either alive or dead, so that it is accepted that their whereabouts are unknown Itinerant Criminal Investigation Judge, and judgment of the 51st Criminal Court of the Bogota Circuit of April 28, 2011 (evidence file, folio 24552). 465 Testimony of Carlos Bacigalupo during the public hearing on the merits in this case. 466 Cf. Written report of Máximo Duque Piedrahíta (evidence file, folio 36427), and Testimony of Máximo Duque Piedrahíta during the public hearing on the merits in this case. 467 Testimony of Carlos Valdés Moreno of March 15, 2012, before the 55th Criminal Court (evidence file, folios 14846, 14848 and 14856). 106