that drove him around the area without taking him immediately to the hospital; iii) that his brother David Octavio Díaz Loreto and his father Octavio Díaz asked a neighbor to drive them to look for Robert Ignacio and that the automobile was hit with a bullet by the police officers, which caused them to get out of the car immediately before their deaths; and iv) that the three alleged victims were left lifeless by the police officers at two different health care facilities. 94. Another aspect which consistently appears in the testimonies and that the State has been unable to explain involves the body of Robert Ignacio Díaz Loreto: at the time of his admittance to the hospital, he was covered with mud and “sewage” even in his eyes, mouth and nose. One of the police officers gave an unsatisfactory explanation of this fact by mentioning that, at the time of the alleged confrontation, Robert Ignacio’s shirt was stained with mud. The circumstances in which the body was observed pursuant to several statements was not pursued as a line of investigation, thus rendering it an unexplained aspect that constitutes further evidence of State responsibility. 95. The Commission also underscores that the descriptions in this set of statements are consistent with the context and modus operandi described in patterns of fact such as, that extrajudicial executions had been occurring: i) in the context of irregular actions of state security forces, with special incidence in the state of Aragua; ii) under the justification of citizen security and the characterization of victims who are automatically incriminated as responsible for crimes; iii) in the form of staged confrontations even through tampering with the scene of the crime or planting evidence that would prove such a confrontation; and iv) followed by the abandonment of the lifeless corpses of the victims at hospital facilities without any follow-up by the police institution. Another element of said context is the situation of impunity in which such crimes usually remain, partly because the hypothesis of the confrontation is assumed to be true. This is consistent with the findings of the domestic rulings about the careless manner in which the evidence was collected and evaluated to conclude that there were grounds to exonerate criminal liability and the consequent acquittals. 96. As for the official version, as was noted above, it involves a police operation designed and executed with the purpose of capturing the persons allegedly responsible for the armed robbery reported on the same day. In this regard, the Commission notes that at the time of the events, Venezuelan law established that: 1. No person may be arrested or detained except under a court order, unless he is caught in flagrante delicto. In this instance, he shall be brought before a judicial authority within a period of time no longer than forty-eight hours from the time of his arrest. He shall be tried on release, except for the reasons determined by the law and assessed by the judge in each case.105 97. Based on the information available, it is obvious that the police officers did not have any court order. According to the State, what took place was a situation of flagrante delicto. However, based on the official version, the judicial authorities did not witness any robbery – which would have triggered the constitutionally provided ability to arrest the persons allegedly responsible – but rather they received a complaint and launched an operation so that the complainant could identify subsequently the persons who allegedly had robbed him. The Commission finds that these circumstances cannot in any way be interpreted as or be comparable to a situation of flagrante delicto. To conclude otherwise would entail extending the concept of being caught in the act of the commission of a crime to situations, such as the one described, in which based on the statements of a person who reports a crime, police officers are empowered to arrest the person accused without any court order and without having actually been present during the criminal acts. 98. Accordingly, the Commission finds that since it was launched, the police operation was pursuing a purpose which runs afoul to the applicable provisions in the area of personal liberty and, consequently, illegal detention under the American Convention. This situation is even more evident when, 105 Article 44 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. 24