- 15 - case 11,227, or have any effects on the petitioners and presumed victims in that case. Consequently, even in the sense alleged by the State, it would not be possible to determine the existence of a “partial concurrence of legal actions”; hence its arguments on the possible prejudgment of case 11,227 are unfounded. 37. Accordingly, the State’s intention to preclude the Court from examining certain facts, set out in its first two objections, is not a matter for a preliminary objection but rather, if appropriate, for the merits stage. Based on the above, the Court rejects the first and second preliminary objections filed by the State. B. Lack of jurisdiction based on the subject matter to declare the existence of a crime against humanity 38. The State argued that, based on the subject matter, the Court does not have jurisdiction to determine or to declare that a crime has been committed in a case and, consequently, to determine whether it was a crime against humanity. In addition, it maintained that States do not commit offenses or crimes; rather, it is possible to speak of aggravated international responsibility in the case of systematic conducts by the States. It added that the Court had never described the conduct of a State “as an international crime”; rather, it has set out its findings in relation to the perpetration of a crime against humanity in the context of its analysis of the merits of the case and not in the operative paragraphs. Moreover, the State maintained that even though the Court has ruled on the existence of crimes, it has always been with the sole purpose of interpreting and underscoring the provisions of the Convention, without this implying that it assumed competences that exceeded the framework established in Article 62(3) of the Convention. It therefore alleged that, under its function of applying the interAmerican norms, the Court did not have competence to classify an act as a crime against humanity. 39. The Commission argued that, in this regard, its intention is that the Court conclude that facts, such as those of the instant case, which occurred in a context of the systematic perpetration of acts of violence against a specific group of society, violate non-derogable norms of international law, which allows it to assess the extent of Colombia’s aggravated obligation to investigate in this case. The representatives stated that they are asking the Court to include among its findings what has already been acknowledged by the Prosecutor General of Colombia;35 namely, that Senator Cepeda’s murder was a crime against humanity and that it formed part of a generalized and systematic attack against members of the UP, with the consequences that this generates for the interpretation of the State’s obligations under the Convention and for the measures of reparation that should be ordered. 40. During the public hearing, the representatives and the State agreed that the Court did not need to rule on the existence of a crime against humanity in the operative paragraphs; moreover, the Commission had not expressly requested this. Nevertheless, in its final written arguments, the State insisted that the Court did not 35 In July 2009, Mario Iguarán, then Prosecutor General of the Nation, affirmed in an interview that “the cases of both Luis Carlos Galán and Manuel Cepeda reveal a systematic, generalized and subjective attack on the New Liberalism and the Patriotic Union, respectively, which allows it to be determined that an extermination was perpetrated and consequently a crime against humanity and, therefore, non-prescription of the criminal action.” Cf. newspaper article published in “El Tiempo” on July 4, 2009, entitled “Intervención de la Procuraduría ha sido mínima en muchos casos, afirma fiscal Mario Iguarán” (evidence file, tome XIX, attachment 1 to the brief with pleadings, motions and evidence, folio 8164).