153. Under the legal framework regulating the military criminal jurisdiction at the time of the incidents, concretely under the Organic Code of Military Justice,the military courts were competent to hear cases of “common crimes” committed by members or officials of the Armed Forces at military establishments(Article 123). Based on said provision of the law, an investigation and court proceeding was instituted by the Office of the Military Prosecutor and the Military Court of Guasdualito in 1998. From the time the petitioners filed their first requests and motions before a number of authorities for clarification of the incidents in which their son had lost his life, they denounced that the military authorities were not moving forward in the proceeding with impartiality and that several irregularities were being committed, which prevented it from moving forward. 154. The Commission notes that in 1999, new rules of criminal procedure came into force in Venezuela, which enabled the parents to become private complainants to the criminal trial, but the case continued to be heard in the military court. Concurrently, the new Constitution approved that year, established that “the competence of military courts is confined to crimes of a military nature.”232 The Chamber for Appeals on Criminal Cassation of the recently created Supreme Court of Justice,under said new Constitution, heard the case in 2000 in settling a motion for cassation filed by the Office of the Military Prosecutor and upheld the decision that the matter should continue to be heard in the military courts and that the case should be brought back to the stage of the preliminary hearing. 155. Additionally, on August 22, 2001, the Court Martial of the Republic upheld the jurisdiction of the Military Court and dismissed the motion filed by the parents as private complainants, for the case to be heard in the ordinary civilian jurisdiction. Subsequently, after an appeal for constitutional relief through amparo was filed with the Constitutional Chamber, and as provided for under the new Constitution, jurisdiction was transferred to the ordinary courts. From 1998 to 2001, and even with the new provisions of the Constitution and the law in effect, the investigation and court proceeding against the State agents identified as possibly responsible for the crimes in which the alleged victim lost his life, were conducted under the military criminal jurisdiction. In that sense, the Commission notes that the Venezuelan regulatory framework, therefore, established the obligation to prosecute acts of this nature –which may constitute human rights violations, causing the military courts to overreach their purview beyond crimes or misdemeanors committed in the course of duty that exclusively harm the juridical interests of the military system. 156. Accordingly, during the essential evidence-gathering stage of the investigation, the case was handled by members of the very institution involved in the acts for which the clarification was being pursued. What’s more, evidence gathered and examined originally by the Technical Corps of the Judicial Police, was subsequently turned over to the Military Court of Guasdualito and remained under the custody and supervision thereof. As will be explained later in the examination of the investigation, particularly significant inconsistencies in the judicial proceeding have been identified and been linked to evidence, which military authorities had in their custody. 157. Additionally, one essential piece of evidence for this type of case, which the parents of Johan Alexis Ortiz were insistent about, the exhumation of the body, was conducted under the command of the Standing Court Martial of San Cristóbal and the Office of the Military Prosecutor; in other words, even though it was conducted in the presence of Mr. Edgar Ortiz and an anatopathologist of the Coroner’s Office of San Cristóbal, the chain of custody of said evidence was under the control of the military authorities. Likewise, during this stage of the investigation, other basic tests were not conducted such as ballistics testing, which was repeatedly requested by the parents of Mr. Ortiz in order to clarify the characteristics of the projectiles extracted from his body. 158. The legal precedents of the Inter-American system have consistently held that special jurisdictions, such as military criminal justice, must have a restrictive and exceptional scope and be aimed at 232Article 261 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.