13
manner without establishing the day in which they had occurred.” For the Commission,
“the most recent reference in such declarations is that of the month of April, 1992.”
Likewise, the Commission indicated that “it is not possible to extract conclusions as to
what descriptions of the crime were applied before the conducts allegedly committed by
Mrs. De La Cruz Flores,” circumstance that “[has] gener[ated], at the same time, lack of
certainty regarding the applicable conviction, given that the three descriptions of the
crime contemplated different ranges of penalty.”
34.
Additionally, the Commission indicated that “[t]he judicial authority, applied the
most repressive penalty (that establishes in the Decree Law 25475) in a retroactive
manner, using as an excuse the alleged obstruction to the process of the victim, for the
fact of having used the legal mechanisms of defense.”
*
*
*
35.
In this regard, the Tribunal recalls that in its Judgment, it declared the violation
to the right of the principle of protection from ex post facto laws, when considering that
“in the judgment of November 21, 1996 […], which convicted María Teresa De La Cruz Flores,
the only testimony cited in support of the judgment[…], which refers to acts she allegedly
committed in 1988 and for which the provisions of Decree Law No. 25,475, which entered into
force on May 5, 1992, would have occurred in 1988.”15
36.
Regarding the second procedure followed against Mrs. De La Cruz Flores before
the Peruvian jurisdiction, taking into account the information submitted by the State, the
Tribunal can confirm that the facts that are being attributed to her, involve the period
between 1988 y 1992, without the existence of a clear identification of the acts
committed during such year that could justify the application of the Decree Law No.
25475. It must be stated the Ruling No. 2903-2008-MP-FN-1º FSP of the First Supreme
Criminal Prosecutors’ Office of December 4, 2008, which solves the exceptions res
judicata and prescriptions issued by the defense of Mrs. De La Cruz Flores, clearly
establish that the facts that are being charged upon the victim had a last day of
performance in the year of 1992, and not until 1993, as the State established in its last
report (supra Having Seen 10). As a matter of fact, according to the First Supreme
Criminal Prosecution:
“Regarding the [e]xtinction of the [c]riminal [a]ction for [p]rescription, it must be highlighted
that according to the terms of the criminal accusation charges, […] since year 1989 until year
1992, several violations to the same criminal law occurred in diverse moments, reason why,
considering the definition of the crime of terrorism as a continuous crime, the term for
prescription shall be counted from the moment of its cessation; namely since year 1992.”
37.
In this manner, the Court observes that when the different documents of the
record of the second process refer to the period between 1988 and 1993 they do it
regarding the term that covers the commission of the crimes allegedly committed by the
fourteen accused persons involved in such process. On the contrary, when they make
specific reference to Mrs. De La Cruz Flores, such term is delimited between 1988 and
1992, although without specifying days or months. In any case, there is a different
determination of the term that covers the alleged criminal acts committed by Mrs. De La
Cruz Flores in the later judgments of the Second Penal Transitory Chamber of the
Supreme Court of March 11 and November 23, 2009, in which texts it is established that
the victim “[would] have participate[d] in the clandestine attention of patients and
carried out surgical interventions to terrorist criminals from year 1989 to year 1992.”
15
Cf. Case of De la Cruz Flores, supra note 5, par. 107.