1. An expert witness may be disqualified based on the following grounds: a. he or she is a relative by blood, affinity, or adoption, up to the fourth degree, of one of the alleged victims; b. he or she is or has been a representative of one of the alleged victims in proceedings regarding the facts of the case before the Court, either at the domestic level or before the Inter-American System for the promotion and protection of human rights; c. he or she currently has, or has had, close ties with the proposing party, or is, or has been, a subordinate of the proposing party, and the Court considers that his or her impartiality may be affected; d. he or she is, or has been, an officer of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with knowledge of the contentious case in which his or her expert opinion is required; e. he or she is or has been an Agent of the respondent State in the contentious case in which his or her expert opinion is required; f. he or she has previously intervened, in any capacity and before any organ, whether national or international, in relation to the same case. D.1) Challenge against Enrique Gimbernat Ordeig 38. Mr. Gimbernat Ordeig, a Spanish professor of Criminal Law, was proposed to render expert opinion on: a) “the universal principles that govern criminal proceedings and their judicial guarantees”; b) analysis of the “indictment formulated against professor Allan R. Brewer Carías by the Attorney General’s Office of Venezuela on January 27, 2005, […]”; c) explanation of “whether t[he] proceeding [against Mr. Brewer Carías], violates one or several of the fundamental rights of the individual recognized by international human rights law, with particular reference to the rights to the presumption of innocence and to defense, […]”; d) “the assessment of the evidence by the Attorney General’s Office whereby, first, it attributed to professor Brewer Carías the crime mentioned and subsequently accused him of the same crime.” 39. The State held that the grounds for disqualification stated in Article 48(f) of the Rules of the Court apply to Mr. Gimbernat, because “at the request of Allan Brewer Carías, he issued an opinion on the same matter on which he seeks to expound before this Court as an expert witness.” According to Venezuela,“ during the admission stage before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, [t]he alleged victim submitted a document for the case file in which professor Enrique Gimbernat issued an opinion on the indictment of the Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office against him.” The State provided a copy of said opinion. 40. In his observations (supra Having Seen 27), Mr. Enrique Gimbernat Ordeig requested that the objection be dismissed. He explained that, “more than a year before the case of [Mr. Brewer Carías] was brought to the attention of the C[ommission]”, he sent Mr. Brewer Carías the “opinion [he] issued on September 21, 2005.” Mr. Gimbernat stated that “the use that [Mr. Brewer Carías] has given […] to [said] legal opinion […] is not, and cannot be understood as [his] ´intervention´ in [the proceeding before the Commission] or in any other proceeding.” He added that, although said opinion was presented as an attachment to the complaint brought before the Commission, he was not 14