5. The submission of the case was notified to the State and to the representatives of the presumed victims5 on May 13, 2011. On July 11, 2011, the Myrna Mack Foundation and the International Human Rights Clinic of the University of California, Berkeley, representatives of the presumed victims in this case (hereinafter “the representatives”), presented their brief with pleadings, motions and evidence (hereinafter “the pleadings and motions brief”) to the Court, pursuant to Articles 25 and 40 of the Court’s Rules of Procedure. The representatives agreed substantially with the allegations of the InterAmerican Commission, asked the Court to declare the State’s international responsibility for the alleged violation of the same articles of the American Convention as those indicated by the Commission, and added that the State had also violated Articles I, II and XI of the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance owing to the alleged forced disappearance of the 26 presumed victims; Articles 8, 13 and 25 of the Convention, in relation to Articles 1(1) and 2 of this instrument, owing to the alleged violation of the right to the truth of the next of kin of the disappeared victims; Article 19 of the Convention, to the detriment of all “the next of kin who were children at the time of the disappearance” of their loved ones, and Article 22 of the Convention, to the detriment of additional next of kin to those identified by the Commission. Consequently, they asked the Court to order different measures of reparation, and to pay the costs and expenses. 6. On October 18, 2011, Guatemala submitted to the Court its brief in answer to the Commission’s submission of the case, and with observations on the pleadings and motions brief (hereinafter “the answering brief”). In this brief, the State made a partial acknowledgment of international responsibility (infra para. 17). Nevertheless, the State contested several of the violations found by the Inter-American Commission and alleged by the representatives, inter alia, because the said violations that had occurred before Guatemala accepted the Court’s contentious jurisdiction were not of a continuing nature. It also referred to the reparations that had been requested. The State appointed María Elena de Jesús Rodríguez López as its Agent for this case, and Enma Estela Hernández Tuy de Iboy as its Deputy Agent. 7. On November 16, 2011, the representatives and the Inter-American Commission presented their observations on the State’s acknowledgment of responsibility. 8. On December 2 and 16, 2011, the representatives informed the Court that the remains of Sergio Saúl Linares Morales and Amancio Samuel Villatoro, two presumed victims in this case, had been found and identified. The representatives forwarded certain probative documentation and offered, and requested the admission of, an additional expert opinion in this regard. On January 25, 2012, the State presented its observations on this information; while, the Inter-American Commission did not present observations. 5 In the brief submitting the case (supra para. 1), the Inter-American Commission indicated that “according to information available to the [Commission], the organization representing the victims in the proceedings before the Inter-American Court is the Myrna Mack Foundation Chang.” Before the notification of the case, on the instruction of the President of the Court, the representatives were requested, inter alia, to confirm their representation of the presumed victims. On May 9, 2011, the Myrna Mack Foundation confirmed its representation of the presumed victims in this case and presented most of the respective powers of attorney. The remaining powers of attorney were presented together with their pleadings and motions brief, as authorized by the President of the Court. The representatives indicated that “it ha[d] not been possible to locate four of [the next of kin represented in this case, namely: Renato Guzmán Castañeda, Gilda Angélica Castañeda, Benigno Emilio Guzmán and Fabián Calderón Díaz] in order to obtain the said power of attorney, because the proceedings before the Commission had taken several years, which had made it difficult to remain in permanent contact with them.” -6-