4
the Court cannot accept the explanations that Mr. Suárez Rosero offers. However,
the comments were submitted within a reasonable period after the prescribed time
limit had expired, and the proceedings in the case were in no way delayed pending
their receipt. Finally, interpretation proceedings are such that it is useful for the
Court to hear the views of all interested parties. For these reasons, the Court has
decided to consider Mr. Suárez Rosero’s comments.
16.
The Court must now turn its attention to the question of whether the
substance of the request for interpretation satisfies with the applicable rules. Article
58 of the Rules of Procedure provides that
[t]he request for interpretation, referred to in Article 67 of the Convention, may be
made in connection with judgments on the merits or on reparations and shall be filed
with the Secretariat. It shall state with precision the issues relating to the meaning or
scope of the judgment of which the interpretation is requested.
In that article of the Convention, the Court is given the authority to interpret its
judgments in the event of questions as to their meaning and scope.
17.
The first issue the State raises (supra 10) is the obvious product of doubt as
to whether tax exemptions applied to any proceeds from the “use and
administration” of the amounts that the Court ordered for Mr. Suárez Rosero, his
wife and daughter. Although the State did not specify which terms of the judgment
on reparations it believed to be obscure or ambiguous, the Court considers that one
of its earlier findings applies with equal force in this situation:
[t]he transparency of this Tribunal’s proceedings is enhanced by clarification, when it so
deems appropriate, of the content and scope of its Judgments, thereby dissipating any
doubts about them, and that they may not be challenged by merely formal
considerations (El Amparo Case, Order of the Court of April 16, 1997, Annual Report
1997, p. 123, first Consideranda).
Accordingly, because the Court considers that effective fulfillment of its judgment on
reparations will be thus enhanced, the Court will interpret this first issue raised in
the request.
18.
The second point for which the State seeks interpretation (supra 11) is a
different one. Ecuador expressed disagreement with the tax exemption the Court
ordered for the expenses and costs, arguing that in its view said costs and expenses
were the amounts earned by the victim’s attorneys in the practice of their profession
and therefore could not be exempted from the “general taxes that every other
attorney [in Ecuador] pays.”
19.
The Commission and Mr. Suárez Rosero argued that with this request for
interpretation, the State was seeking nullification of part of the judgment on
reparations.
20.
The Court has held that
[the] request or petition for interpretation of a judgment may not be used as a means
of challenging it, but must be made for the sole purpose of working out the meaning of
the decision when one of the parties maintains that the text of its operative paragraphs
or its consideranda is unclear or imprecise, provided those consideranda affect that
operative paragraph. Hence, a request for interpretation may not be used to seek
amendment or nullification of the judgment in question. (Loayza Tamayo Case, Order