32
expenses.66 Mónica Feria Tinta represented the alleged victims and their next
of kin before the Inter-American Court, and for this she too incurred various
expenses.67
VIII
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STATE
Pleadings of the Commission
68.
Regarding to the origin of the international responsibility of the State, the
Commission pointed out that:
a)
in the inter-American system for protection of human rights the
international responsibility of the State arises when an act that violates
human rights takes place; however, said system is a subsidiary one, and the
State has the authority and the duty to try to solve the matter at the
domestic level, that is, to investigate, punish, and provide compensation;
b)
in this regard, if the State investigates and punishes all those
responsible for the facts and adequately compensates the [alleged] victims or
their next of kin, “it discharges its international responsibility, which arose
when the facts occurred and it is no longer internationally responsible before
the inter-American system [for protection] of human rights due to noncompliance with its obligation;” and
c)
“in studying whether or not [the] responsibility is applicable, it is
necessary to take into account the subsidiary nature of the inter-American
system and to ascertain the outcome of the domestic proceedings; otherwise,
the inter-American system would practically become a main and original Court
and it would lose [the] subsidiary nature given to it by the Inter-American
convention.”
Pleadings of the representative of the alleged victims and their next of kin
69.
Regarding to the emergence of the international responsibility of the State,
the representative of the alleged victims and their next of kin stated that:
a)
the responsibility of the State does not arise due to lack of due
investigation, but from the moment in which the substantive provisions of the
Convention were directly breached. The instant case is not one of “procedural”
abridgment of the articles of the Convention due to “lack of investigation and
punishment of those responsible,” but rather, first and foremost, the
international responsibility of the State is in question because it violated its
obligation to respect the rights enshrined in the American Convention, to the
detriment of Rafael Samuel and Emilio Moisés Gómez Paquiyauri;
66
See reports by the Inter-American Commission on admissibility (44/01), and on the merits
(99/01) of the instant case (file with appendixes to the application, volume I, appendixes 1 and 2, leaves
6 to 47).
67
See power of attorney granted to Mónica Feria Tinta by Ricardo Samuel Gómez Quispe and
Marcelina Paquiyauri Illanes de Gómez (file on the merits and possible reparations, volume I, leaves 44 to
50); and copies of vouchers submitted as supporting documents for the expenses incurred by the
representative of the alleged victims (file with appendixes to the brief with final pleadings of the
representative of the alleged victims, volume VII, leaves 1173 to 1514).