289. The Court notes that, based on the expert opinion of Máximo Duque and the considerations of the judgment of the Superior Court of Bogota in the proceedings against the Commander of the Cavalry School, the State argued that possibilities exist, other than the forced disappearance of the presumed victims, to explain why their remains have not yet appeared, such as: (i) that their remains are among the unidentified corpses found in the mass grave in the South Cemetery; (ii) that the presumed disappeared victims died in the Palace of Justice, where their remains were completely consumed by the fire “or that the condition of the corpses prevented their identification,” and (iii) that, owing to errors in the identification of the bodies, the remains of the presumed disappeared victims could have been returned to other families erroneously. 290. Regarding the possibility that the presumed disappeared victims are among the bodies exhumed from the mass grave in the South Cemetery, the Court notes the following: after the events, 94 corpses from the Palace of Justice were sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine (60 carbonized and 34 without any charring); 451 of these 38 corpses were buried in the mass grave in the South Cemetery (supra para. 155). In 1998, the exhumation of all the remains in the said grave was initiated, including those from the corpses of 90 adults, among whom were those from the Palace of Justice (supra paras. 192 and 193). According to genetic tests performed in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2010 and 2012 none of these remains of the exhumed corpses have been identified as belonging to the disappeared victims in this case, with the exception of Ana Rosa Castiblanco Torres, identified in 2001 (supra paras. 192 to 195). 291. The Court notes that, in January 2012, the Superior Court of Bogota indicated that, in the course of this procedure, it was unaware of whether “any tests” had been performed on 30 of the remains exhumed from the mass grave. 452 However, it should be noted that, following this, in March 2012, Dr. Yolanda González López, expert witness of the Genetics Laboratory of the Prosecutor’s Office, testified during the criminal proceedings against the members of the B-2 of the 13th Brigade (supra para. 190) and stated that DNA tests had been performed on the 90 adult bodies exhumed, and no results had been obtained on five of them, 453 while the remainder were excluded as belonging to the presumed disappeared victims, with the exception of Norma Constanza Esquerra and Irma Franco Pineda regarding whom no tests had been carried out. 454 292. This Court also has a certification that, in July 2012, testing was carried out on the remains of three of the five skeletons from which no results had been obtained (supra para. 451 Cf. Note from the Institute of Forensic Medicine of December 17, 1985 (evidence file, folio 37920) 452 Cf. Judgment of the Superior Court of Bogota of January 30, 2012 (evidence file, folio 23046). Similarly, in October 2014, another chamber of the same court indicated that the tests on the exhumed remains had been carried out on a “sample of 28 corpses with signs of carbonization,” so that “tests were pending and information needed to be verified in order to be able to affirm […] that the other victims […] were not among the existing human remains.” However, this chamber clarified that this information was based on the available evidence when the first instance judgment was delivered in April 2011, and that although it was aware, through the newspapers, “that the Institute of Forensic Medicine [was] continuing to verify the remains to determine whether any of the eleven disappeared are among those found in the mass grave of the South Cemetery, […] that information [was] not available to [the] proceedings.” Cf. Judgment of the Superior Court of Bogota of October 24, 2014 (evidence file, folios 38283 and 38376). 453 According to the testimony of Yolanda González López, the DNA of the remains sent to the Genetics Laboratory of corpses numbered 16, 18, 56, 58 and 85 was significantly tainted and the identification department forwarded them other parts of the said corpses in order to carry out the pertinent genetic tests. Cf. Testimony of Yolanda González, expert witness of the Genetics Laboratory of the Attorney General’s office, of March 15, 2012, before the 55th Special Criminal Circuit Court of Bogota (evidence file, folio 14823). 454 Regarding Irma Franco Pineda, the expert witness explained that there were two reports in the files “which indicate that the samples from [two family members of Irma Franco Pineda] have been processed.” However, “there is no result of the testing procedure.” Cf. Testimony of Yolanda González López of March 15, 2012, before the 55th Criminal Court (evidence file, folios 14823, 14824, 14829 and 14830). 103