-56harms personal liberty has occurred, even though the person in favor of whom it is filed is no longer in the State’s custody, but has been handed over into the custody of an individual or even though considerable time has passed since a person disappeared. 80. The Court finds that, according to the provisions of Article 38 and 40 of the Salvadoran Constitutional Procedures Act, the purpose of the remedy of habeas corpus in El Salvador has similar characteristics to those stated in the preceding paragraph. In El Salvador, the remedy encompasses harm to the right to personal liberty when the person is in the custody or in the power of the authorities or an individual. Under this law, the officer responsible for executing the habeas corpus procedure has broad powers to request information from State authorities and individuals, and article 74 of the law on “responsibilities of officials in the habeas corpus procedure,” establishes that “[n]o authority, court or jurisdiction shall received privileged treatment in this matter.” 81. In this regard, the Court considers it important to note that, in another case decided on March 20, 2002, when resolving a petition for habeas corpus owing to the alleged disappearance of two sisters by members of the Atlacatl Battalion in an operation carried out in Morazán in 1981, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice “acknowledge[d] the constitutional violation of the right to physical liberty” of the said persons, on the basis that it was admissible to modify the jurisprudential principles of the Constitutional Chamber in relation to habeas corpus, “so that such serious alleged acts of harm to the right to liberty as forced disappearance and others that might occur were not excluded from the remedy of habeas corpus.” This Chamber stated that habeas corpus “is available to individuals so that they may respond to possible violations of their right to physical liberty, and it is essential to broaden the scope of its control, so that it can include the cases of forced disappearances of persons, the effects of which differ according to the circumstances of each specific case.” 82. Finally, regarding the State’s argument that the remedy of habeas corpus was not appropriate to identify the authors of the punishable facts, but rather it was the criminal proceedings alone that were admissible, article 76 of the Constitutional Procedures Act establishes that, once the habeas corpus has been processed, the court that has ordered it “shall order the person or authority who has held the beneficiary in detention or custody to be prosecuted, if it appears that they have committed an offense, and shall remit a certified copy of the proceedings to the competent court, if this is different from the one ordering the habeas corpus, or to the corresponding authority or body if a prior declaration of admissibility is necessary in order to open a case.” In this way, the use of the remedy of habeas corpus does not exclude a subsequent criminal proceedings based on information gathered during the remedy. 83. The Court has stated (supra para. 65) that due diligence requires the investigating body to carry out all measures and investigations necessary to try and obtain the required result. Otherwise, the investigation is not effective in the terms of the Convention. 84. An examination of the processing of the petition for habeas corpus shows, on the one hand, that the court that processed this remedy had, under the powers conferred on it by domestic law, the possibility of furthering the task of discovering the whereabouts of Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano Cruz and, on the other hand, that