no need for evidence-based proof that family members have experienced serious violations of their psychological and moral, as this collateral outcome can be presupposed. 435. The Commission emphasized actions taken by the State subsequent to the alleged arbitrary and extrajudicial executions, which were additional violations of the dignity of the alleged victims’ families, specifically: (i) burying the remains as unidentified persons which, as explained by the Commission, visited additional suffering upon the families, denying them the possibility of burying their dead in a place of their own choosing and according their own beliefs, and (ii) not having conducted a serious investigation into the alleged arbitrary extrajudicial executions of the alleged victims, so that even today the facts remain in impunity. The Commission cited the Court’s case law holding that the lack of effective judicial remedies is in itself a source of additional suffering and anguish for the family members of alleged victims, stressing that justice had still not been delivered in the instant case. The Commission said that the alleged denial of justice “was shown to have occurred: (i) from the first moment […] after the [alleged] executions took place, because of the irregularities in the investigation; (ii) by the [many years’] failure to conduct an effective investigation, on the court’s own motion; (iii) by granting jurisdiction to the military criminal justice system, and (iv) because of the delays and limitations […] that occurred in prosecution by the ordinary courts of a very small number of persons.” The Commission held that all the State’s actions, combined with the alleged extrajudicial executions per se, embodied a violation of the personal integrity of family members of the alleged victims. 436. The Commission concluded that the State should be declared responsible for violating the right to humane treatment enshrined in Article 5(1) and 5(2) of the American Convention, read in conjunction with Article 1(1) thereof, in injury of the following family members: Florentín Peceros Farfán, Nemecia Pedraza de Peceros, Jhenifer Solanch Peceros Quispe, Herma Luz Cueva Torres, Edgar Odón Cruz Acuña and Lucinda Rojas Landa. 437. The representatives said that, according to the Court’s case law, the family members of alleged victims may themselves be considered victims of violation of their personal integrity, and detailed the facts that pointed to this breach. They stressed that “Peru violated the right to personal integrity in injury of the family members […] due to the suffering caused by the [alleged] extrajudicial executions of the [alleged] victims, the failure of justice and the way their loved ones’ remains were disposed of.” The representatives argued that in the instant case, the “next of kin” of the alleged victims “were exposed to profound sorrow over the years,” and that the relatives of Eduardo Nicolás Cruz Sánchez found out about his death when they saw it in the news, while the families of Herma Luz Meléndez Cueva and Víctor Salomón Peceros Pedraza did not learn of the deaths of their loved ones until the 2001 investigations. The representatives noted that the fact that the bodies of the alleged victims had been transferred to the Central Hospital of the National Police of Peru, and that the bodies had been disposed of secretly without notifying the next of kin, combined with the lack of explanations by the State “about the circumstances in which [the alleged victims] had died or the circumstances of their deaths,” violated the personal integrity of the family members of the alleged victims. The representatives went on to stress the violations committed against the personal integrity of these alleged victims because of the way their loved ones’ remains were disposed of, and due to the slowness and lack of diligence in both the ordinary courts and the military jurisdiction in imparting justice for the reported extrajudicial executions. Finally, the representatives argued that the Court had established the iuris tantum presumption of violation of the rights to psychological and moral integrity in injury of the next of kin of the victims of certain human rights violations, such as extrajudicial execution and forced disappearance, and therefore it fell to the State to prove otherwise.

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