16 lawsuits against them had been reactivated. This situation obliged her to request political asylum in Costa Rica, together with her husband, and this was granted to them. C) EXPERT EVIDENCE a. Expert report of Jorge Avendaño Valdéz, lawyer, former Peruvian Congressman, former Dean of the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Peru, former Dean of the Lima Bar Association, on the impeachment proceeding against the justices of the Constitutional Court before the Congress of the Republic Peruvian legislation establishes two procedures for investigating different matters of national interest. On the one hand, investigation committees are set up for all matters of public interest and, on the other, the Permanent Committee, through the impeachment procedure, is responsible for investigating any violation of the Constitution or alleged offense by any of the senior officials mentioned in article 99 of the Constitution. The investigation procedure regulated in article 88 of the Rules of Procedure of the Congress was established for cases of public interest and is initiated by an agenda motion submitted by any member or group of members of Congress on any matter of interest to the Nation. The investigation committee is composed of three to five members and must conduct its activities within the time limit and terms of reference established by Congress. The plenum, as the highest organ of Congress, appoints members of the investigation committees and has the powers to delimit their work. Thus, the full Congress indicates the objectives of each specific investigation, the duration and the members, and also establishes the terms of reference. In this particular case, Congress expressly defined not only the terms of reference, which were to investigate the facts denounced by Justice Revoredo, but it also expressly agreed that the investigations conducted by the investigative committee could not examine the judgments of the Constitutional Court, as the latter is an autonomous, independent organ, specifically appointed by the Constitution to supervise the acts of Congress. Therefore, if the investigation committee deviated from or exceeded its terms of reference, as in this case, it would invalidate any decisions it made, with absolute nullity, and also the whole subsequent impeachment procedure. “[I]f the investigative committee presumes that an offense exists, [...] it formulates a complaint which, if this is against any official [such as the members of the Constitutional Court], gives rise to an impeachment proceeding.” However, the justices of the Constitutional Court were not notified that they would be investigated for alleged irregularities when processing the file on presidential re-election, but rather, after they had made their statements before the Investigation Committee on the facts denounced by Justice Revoredo Marsana, they were only notified of the change in the investigation when it was before the Evaluation Sub-Committee; owing to this, they were unable to exercise their right to defense when faced with the impeachment proceeding. Moreover, the Investigation Committee submitted its report to the Permanent Committee rather than to the full Congress, as stipulated in the Rules of Procedure; this constitutes an irregularity that could annul the procedure at that stage. Should the Investigation Committee have concluded that, in addition to the facts denounced by Justice Revoredo Marsana, the members of the Court had committed an alleged error, the Committee could have requested the plenum to consider this and take a decision on expanding its terms of reference.