DISSENTING VOTE OF JUDGE EUGENIO RAUL ZAFFARONI CASE OF PALACIO URRUTIA ET AL. V. ECUADOR JUDGMENT OF NOVEMBER 24, 2021 (Merits, Reparations and Costs) I PRELIMINARY ARGUMENT 1. I advise that, in my opinion, the various elements contained in these files, those presented at the hearing, those emanating from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ documents, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers and this Court, the news broadcast by the national and international press, as well as the information that is public and common knowledge, are sufficiently precise and concordant, to consider it proven that the State voluntarily placed itself in a defenseless situation before this Court. 2. As a consequence of the defenseless position taken by the State, there has not been a true adversarial process in the proceedings undertaken before the System and the Court. Therefore, and according to the arguments that I will develop below, I consider that the central problem of this case is the inadmissibility of the singular acknowledgment made by the State. 3. Given that the factual framework allows us to verify that in Ecuador there is a manifest and fierce political struggle dividing the country that generated a complex institutional reality, the set of elements mentioned above builds a picture that allows us to conclude that the singular attitude assumed by the State seeks a conviction that affects a notorious leader of the main opposition party, not only politically but also financially (via a curious system of automatic repetition). 4. Thus, he and his political movement would be the convicted party, real or ontic, but before the Court they are deprived of the right of defense, as they are not the formal subjects of the conviction. 5. I will go on to analyze, in particular, the elements that lead to this conclusion, without prejudice to highlighting other issues, arising from the central and unavoidable fact of the inadmissibility of the conspicuous recognition by the State. II CONTEXT OF THE CASE II.1. What is meant by "context”? 6. To weigh up all the elements of the case, it is essential to refer to what this Court has invariably considered as the context of the facts submitted to its jurisdiction on each occasion. 7. No human behavior operates in a vacuum and the law can only judge human interactions, which always take place under given circumstances, that is, in a certain situational constellation in time. Behaviors operate in the chronological concatenation of temporality (Zeitlichkeit) inherent in everything human. 1 1 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit [Being and Time], Tübingen, 1953, pp. 231 ff. 1