19 del Quiché,60 decided that by virtue of the fact that the facts denounced were committed within the municipality of Santa María Nebaj, the competent judge to exercise jurisidiction is the First Instance Court for Criminal, Narcotis, and Environmental Offenses of Santa María Nebaj. Subsequently, this court received the dossier through the order of July 7, 2008 and it forwarded it to the Public Prosecutors’ Office for its investigation.61 * * * 48. The arrest and subsequent forced disappearance of María Tiu Tojín and her daughter were not isolated facts. In Guatemala, between the years 1962 and 1996 there was a domestic armed conflict that resulted in elevated human, material, institutional, and moral costs. It has been estimated that during this time “more than two hundred thousand people” were victims of arbitrary executions and forced disappearances, as a consequence of the political violence.62 In ethnical terms “83.3% of the victims of violations to human rights and acts of violence registered by the [Commission for Historic Explanations (hereinafter the “CEH”)] belonged to any Mayan ethnic group, 16.5% belonged to the mestizo group and 0.2% to other groups.63 49. As has been established in other cases regarding Guatemala brought before this Tribunal,64 the forced disappearance of persons in that country constituted a practice of the State during the time of the internal armed conflict carried out mainly by agents of its security forces, through which members of insurgent movements or people identified as inclined to insurgency were captured and held secretly without informing a competent, independent, and impartial legal authority, and they were physically and psychologically tortured in order to obtain information and, possibly, even murdered. 50. The internal armed conflict “created a scenario that favored the exposure of children to be exposed to a multiplicity of violations. It has been documented that in the execution of military operations […] boys and girls were the victims of forced disappearances.”65 60 Cfr. order of June 17, 2008 of the Court of the First Instance for Criminal, Narcotics, and Environmental Offenses of Santa Cruz, Department of the Quiché (dossier of merits, volume III, folio 720). 61 Cfr. certificate of July 7, 2008 of the Court of the First Instance for Criminal, Narcotic, and Environmental Offenses of Santa María Nebaj, Department of the Quiché (dossier of merits, volume III, folio 722) 62 Cfr. CEH, Memoria del Silencio, Volume V, Conclusions and Recommendations, page 21 (Available at http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/gmds_pdf/). 63 Cfr. CEH, Memoria del Silencio, Volume II, Conclusions and Recommendations, page 321 and 322 (Available at http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/gmds_pdf/). 64 Cfr. Case of Bámaca Velásquez v. Guatemala, supra note 16, para. 132 and Case of Molina Theissen v. Guatemala, supra note 16, para. 40(1) 65 Cfr. ODHAG, Report “Hasta Encontrarte: Niñez Desaparecida por el conflicto armado interno en Guatemala”, 2000, page 29.

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