114
c)
to adopt the measures required to guarantee Jennifer Harbury and the
other next of kin of Bámaca Velásquez their right to participate in all
legal procedures carried out to locate the mortal remains of the victim
and to determine the responsibility for violations committed, through
timely and effective notice of such procedures;
d)
to allow Jennifer Harbury to publicly present the facts, as a form of
reparation of the detriment caused by the campaign conducted by
State authorities against her honor and reputation; in this regard, they
requested that three pages be included in the national daily with the
highest circulation in Guatemala, and that a video tape be edited on
the facts that affected Mrs. Harbury’s image;
e)
taking the legislative and any other measures necessary to adapt the
Guatemalan legal system to human rights norms and humanitarian law
and, specifically, to adapt to those standards the procedures applied
by the military forces in connection with treatment of captured
combatants, to ensure their right to life, liberty, humane treatment,
judicial protection and a fair trial; and
f)
to declare the loss of possibilities of “self-realization” and “life options”
of Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, as a consequence of the violations
committed against him by State agents, which must be considered by
the Court, from “an integral and not only patrimonial perspective”,
when it sets the amount of compensatory indemnification.
The
Commission added that there must be a “flexible interpretation of lost
earnings, […] not merely through mechanical application of the growth
that would have occurred in the same job, but rather expanding the
concept of lost earnings, to refer to what would have been probable in
equity”. Furthermore, they requested that the age and expectations
shared by his spouse be taken into account, for which reason they
estimated US$25,000.00 (twenty-five thousand United States dollars)
as a “minimum threshold” to set compensation in equity for detriment
to his life plan.
Arguments of the State
71.
Guatemala expressed its commitment to “promote and advance the
investigations to clarify the facts analyzed by the Court”. The State also pointed out
that the signing of the “Agreement for a Firm and Lasting Peace” is an important
element for events such as those of the instant case not to occur again, and that the
fact that the historical truth-finding committee or Comisión de Esclarecimiento
Histórico has taken cognizance of them represents “a principle of reparation by
means of which Guatemalan society can know the historical truth”. Finally, the State
referred to the development of various political actions by the State tending to
provide “redress and reparation” to the victims of the various violations that occurred
in Guatemala, and among them the State mentioned the draft bill of the Peace
Committee or Comisión de Paz y Concordia, the establishment of the National
Program to Search for Missing Persons, and the National Program for Exhumations.
These are set in the framework of the activities of the Presidential Coordinating
Committee for the Policy of the Executive regarding Human Rights. The State
recognized, however, that such initiatives do not guarantee that the whereabouts of
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