31. The victims of bad treatments and torture (v.g., cases of Loayza Tamayo versus Peru, 1997-1998; Suárez Rosero versus Ecuador, 1997-1999; Cantoral Benavides versus Peru, 2000-2001; Tibi versus Ecuador, 2004; among others), who have been strongly humiliated, for the first time feel legally equal to the respondent States, upon personally presenting their case before the Court and personally vindicating before it the reparation. The victims act as real subject of law and not as mere objects of protection. This also contributes to avoiding the repetition of the violations. The jurisprudence itself must reflect the interdisciplinary nature (Law, psychology, anthropology, sociology) in attention to and in the reparations ordered in favor of victims. 32. During the years of my Presidency of the Inter-American Court, I invariably made emphasis in receiving, in public hearings, not only witnesses, but also experts from different areas of human knowledge. I have always given said public hearings a greater relevance, based on a series of reasons: a) they contribute to the materialization of the equality of arms (égalité des armes), so the parties have equal opportunities to present all their arguments and evidence before the Court; b) they guarantee compliance with the principle of having the presence of both parties to an action,27 and therefore the parties feel, themselves, satisfied that all their evidence has been produced before the Court for the determination of the facts, and all their arguments have been presented before the Court for its evaluation of what occurred; and c) they constitute, for the victims, as previously stated, a form of reparation, and for them one of the most important. 33. To the contrary of what is underlying the decision of the majority of the Court regarding the specific matters in the present case, the doubts that have to be clarified, both juridical and factual, are not only the Judges’ doubts, but also – and mainly – the parties’ doubts. And, for this purpose, public hearings are not only more appropriate but also necessary. Therefore, in the course of the present proceedings of Interpretation of the Judgment, I allowed myself to address a letter to the Secretariat of the Court, on August 10, 2007, recommending that a public hearing be held28 in relation to the requests – presented by all the procedural parties participating in the present case of the Castro Castro Prison –of Interpretation of the Judgment, but the majority of the Tribunal preferred to do without said hearing. 34. The present case of the Castro Castro Prison is paradigmatic in what refers to the bad conditions of detention and the violent attack against defenseless people, who were under the State’s custody. The petitioners presented arguments better substantiated than those of the Inter-American Commission itself (v.g., regarding the matter of the principle of proportionality), in a demonstration that the victims, as subjects of International Law, are in better conditions of presenting their case before a tribunal such as the InterAmerican Court than any intermediary presumably acting on their behalf. In reference to the international subjectivity of groups of individuals, the case of the Moiwana Community versus Suriname (Judgment on merits of 06.15.2005) presents an appropriate illustration of a case of rights of the people.29 . For a recent general study, cf., [Various Authors,] Le principe du contradictoire devant les juridictions internationales (eds. H. Ruiz Fabri and J.-M. Sorel), Paris, Pédone, 2004, pp. 1-195. 27 . 28 IACHR, document CDH-11.015/288, pp. 1-2 (internal circulation). . And, specifically, on the legal subjectivity of people within international law. For example, the Court recalled, in its Judgment, that six Maroons communities in Suriname, 29 10

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