26 requested and, if they should not do so, [the Mayor] shall impose on them a fine of 1,000 to 10,000 sucres, and shall immediately begin to study the relevant facts that allow him to issue any of the following decisions, with justifications, and within forty-eight hours, if he has not rejected the appeal: 1. The immediate release of the appellant, if the arrest or imprisonment are not justified; 2. An order that the legal defects be rectified, if the recourse is merely claiming flaws in the procedure or the investigation; 3. An order that the appellant be brought before the appropriate judges, if the complaint refers to competence or his examination of the case leads him to this conclusion. 125. The second available remedy was the action for juridical protection or “amparo of freedom” (amparo de libertad), also known as the habeas corpus prescribed by law (habeas corpus legal), which is established in Article 458 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as follows: Any defendant who is detained, based on the breach of the consistent principles of this Code, may request his liberty from the superior Judge to the one who ordered its deprivation. […] The petition shall be made in writing. Immediately after receiving the application, the judge who will examine it shall order that the detained person be brought before him and shall hear his statement, which shall be recorded in a document to be signed by the judge, the secretary and the complainant, or by a witness instead of the latter, if he does not know how to sign his name. With this statement, the judge shall request all the information he deems necessary to form an opinion and ensure the lawfulness of his decision, and within forty-eight hours he shall decide what he considers is lawful. […] If he decides that the deprivation of liberty was unlawful, the judge shall order that the detained person be released immediately. The authorities and employees responsible for the custody of the detained person must necessarily obey the order. 126. The Court must therefore examine whether the remedies established in law and filed by the victims complied with the provisions of Article 7(6) of the Convention. First, it will proceed to examine the constitutional habeas corpus and then the action for judicial protection. a) Constitutional habeas corpus 127. Mr. Lapo filed a constitutional habeas corpus on September 3, 1998, before the Mayor of the canton of Santiago de Guayaquil.70 The Court does not have the Mayor’s decision on this recourse,71 but it can be supposed that it was denied, because Mr. Lapo remained in custody. Mr. Chaparro did not use this recourse. 128. Article 7(6) of the Convention is clear when it establishes that the authority who must decide on the lawfulness of the “arrest or detention” must be a judge or court. The Convention is thereby ensuring that control of deprivation of liberty must be of a judicial nature. Although he may have been granted competence by law, a mayor is not a judicial authority. According to the Ecuadorean Constitution, a mayor is a “sectional regime” authority; in other words, part of the Administration. 129. The Court is aware that negative decisions by a mayor could be appealed before the Constitutional Court, an authority that does exercise judicial control. It is also aware 70 Cf. application for habeas corpus presented on September 3, 1998, by Freddy Hernán Lapo Íñiguez and his lawyer (files of appendixes to the application, appendix 30, folio 1149). 71 As stated in paragraph 8 of this judgment, the President of the Court asked the State to forward legible copies of all the domestic proceedings. The State did not remit the constitutional habeas corpus proceedings. The Court only has the documentation that the Commission forwarded with the application brief.