López. The State also advised that the 31 cellular telephones had already been delivered to the members of the PRODH Center; d) The State’s willingness to respond to the request made by the petitioners in the hearing held before the Inter-American Commission on November 16, 2001, at which the petitioners requested the appointment of an official responsible for coordinating the protection measures and to serve as a liaison person to look into and resolve any incident that might occur, and also the appointment of an expert to advise the petitioners about practical self-protection measures. In that respect, during the said hearing before the Commission, the latter was given the name of the official of the Department of the Interior responsible for coordinating the measures of protection. During the current hearing before the Court, the State reported that an expert had already been employed to provided advice on practical selfprotection measures; e) The actions taken in the investigation into the death of Digna Ochoa; f) The State’s total willingness to implement any necessary safety measure with regard to the next of kin of Digna Ochoa y Plácido. 10. The statement of the State’s representative on the factors that had been taken into consideration in order to request that the provisional measures ordered in favor of Digna Ochoa y Plácido and others should be lifted: the following factors were taken into consideration in the decision to request the lifting of the precautionary measures. First, the absence of complaints of threats by Digna Ochoa or the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center. The fact that, for several months, she had not had police protection, when she went to the United States and then returned [...] and there were no complaints or threats, which [...] led us to believe that the climate of intimidation and harassment had ceased. Lastly, the issue of the investigation, and in this case, I am referring to the investigation of the Office of the Attorney General: […] the response of the Office of the Attorney General was always that there were no elements to continue with the investigation [...]. But, in any case, we felt that the measures had achieved their purpose. Unfortunately, we were mistaken also and we agree with the petitioners that, this time, we cannot allow these facts to happen again, so we have implemented all the measures of protection requested of us. Consequently, we have set up a permanent dialogue with the petitioners, with the human rights defenders and, therefore, we submit ourselves to the Court, the Commission and to public opinion in everything related to these provisional measures. CONSIDERING: 1. That the State ratified the American Convention on April 3, 1982, and, pursuant to Article 62 of the Convention, accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court on December 16, 1998. 2. That Article 63(2) of the American Convention establishes that in case of “extreme gravity and urgency, and when necessary to avoid irreparable damage to persons”, the Court may, in matters not yet submitted to it and at the request of the Commission, adopt the provisional measures that it deems pertinent.