14 Accomplices or accessories after the fact shall be punished with twenty to forty years of imprisonment. Those who are sentenced to imprisonment for the crime of kidnapping or abduction shall not be granted a reduction in the punishment for any reason. 43(5) On October 31, 2000, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala, in its capacity as a special court of amparo, issued a ruling in which it questioned the expansion of the application of the death penalty for the crime of kidnapping in the latest reform of the Penal Code (supra para. 43(4)). This tribunal considered: That the criminal act sanctioned with the death penalty in Article 201 of the Penal Code before the Pact of San José came into force was a complex crime and its definition included two types of punishable conduct: (a) the kidnapping of a person, and (b) the death of the victim. That the one crime (kidnapping plus the death of the victim) is a different crime from the other (simple kidnapping), even though the name has not changed, because in the case of the former, the highest juridical right: life, is protected. In contrast, in the other, the protected right is individual freedom [...]. Article 201 of the Penal Code in force when the American Convention on Human Rights became legally binding for the State of Guatemala did not include the death penalty for the crime of kidnapping or abduction that was not followed by the death of the victim.10 43(6) The Constitutional Court of Guatemala changed its opinion when Mr. Raxcacó Reyes filed an application for amparo. This court indicated, inter alia, that there was no incompatibility between the different reforms of Article 201 of the Penal Code and the American Convention, because the legislators had extended the application of the punishment based on the criterion of the perpetrator of the crime of kidnapping, an extension that the Convention does not prohibit, since it is the same crime for which this punishment had already been established when the Convention came into force (infra para. 49(16)). The criminal proceedings and the sentencing to death of Mr. Raxcacó Reyes 43(7) On August 5, 1997, at 6.50 a.m., the child, Pedro Alberto de León Wug, was kidnapped by three armed men. In repeated telephone communications, the kidnappers demanded that the child’s father, Oscar de León Gamboa, pay Q.1,000,000.00 (one million quetzales) to obtain his freedom.11 43(8) On August 6, 1997, the child was found and freed unharmed, as the result of a police operation carried out by investigators attached to the Anti-Kidnapping and Extortion Section of the National Civil Police.12 43(9) During the police operation Ronald Raxcacó Reyes, Jorge Mario Murga Rodríguez, Carlos Manuel García Morales, Hugo Humberto Ruiz Fuentes and Olga Isabel Vicente were captured and placed at the disposal of the Second Magistrate for 10 Cf. judgment delivered by the Constitutional Court of Guatemala, as a Special Court of Amparo, on October 31, 2000 (file of appendixes to the brief with requests, arguments and evidence, appendix 1, folios 524 and 530). 11 Cf. judgment delivered by the Sixth Court on Criminal Sentencing, Drug-Trafficking and Environmental Crimes of Guatemala on May 14, 1999 (file of appendixes to the application, appendix 5, folios 109 and 110). 12 Cf. judgment delivered by the Sixth Court on Criminal Sentencing, Drug-Trafficking and Environmental Crimes of Guatemala on May 14, 1999 (file of appendixes to the application, appendix 5, folio 111).