17 but rather an actual power that was totally illegal. The only way to legally detain a person was in cases of flagrancy, and only to hand that person over to the authorities. The military commanders, at that time, were de facto outside civilian control. In some cases they may have gone too far, but the pattern was always the same. It was impossible for the civil authorities to have been unaware and for the various governments in which these facts occurred to have done absolutely nothing; this makes the investigations more difficult due to the alleged participation of civil authorities by action or by omission. Members of these two military corps: the Tenth Battalion and the territorial forces, were apparently involved in human rights violations in other cases. Nevertheless, the members of those military groups are still members of the police, which compromises their independence. This creates a degree of insecurity in civil society, and it is possible that the methods they learned in the 1980s continue to be used currently. The factors of impunity at the time were: preponderance of military over civilian power, as well as the belief that what was being fought was a war and that there was an enemy to destroy and that, therefore, human rights did not count, and legal controls that the authorities should be subject to were not effective. On the other hand, the political class preferred to refrain from effecting any change with respect to the military out of fear of a coup. It was a situation of predominance of the armed forces and paralysis of the judiciary. At that time, the press played an important role. Through the series of cases that he analyzed during his years as Commissioner, the expert witness noted the slowness and weakness of the judiciary and specifically the ineffectiveness of the habeas corpus remedy. Due to the latter factor, the case of Juan Humberto Sánchez was included in the Report “Los Hechos hablan por sí mismos,” as it was clear that said habeas corpus remedies had been attempted and that they had been fruitless. The fact that the judiciary became politicized is what still makes the system not function adequately. The situation of the judiciary was one of fear and abdication of its constitutional obligation to investigate and try those crimes. There was generalized fear, to the point that to date none of the 184 cases analyzed by the Office of the National Human Rights Commissioner have been investigated and there have been no judgments. The judiciary system was notoriously ineffective. Remedies were filed before judicial bodies and they were fruitless. The modus operandi of the forced disappearances at the time was as follows: between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, special corps were created within the armed forces to monitor persons considered suspicious of being subversive. Once they were detained, they were usually interrogated, resorting to the most sophisticated tortures. Finally, many of these persons were murdered, often with a finishing shot, bound and buried in clandestine cemeteries or unauthorized places. This continued to happen throughout that period. At that time, the human rights organizations sent a request for an investigation to clarify said disappearances and the expert witness undertook the responsibility of