SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE A.A. CANÇADO TRINDADE 1. I appear to set my opinion for the adoption, by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, of this Judgment in the case of Ximenes-Lopes v. Brasil. Considering the particular relevance of the subject matter analyzed by the Court, I am obliged to set forth, in this Separate Opinion, my personal considerations on the matter discussed by the Court in this Judgment, as the arguments of my position. And I do so, as usual in this Court, under the merciless pressure of time, as I only had a few hours for the elaboration and presentation of this Opinion. For the above mentioned purpose, I shall refer, in this Separate Opinion, to the following items: a) focus on the victims suffering in International Human Rights Law; b) the acknowledgment of international liability by the Respondent Government; c) the right of access to justice lato sensu in the inevitable dissociability between Articles 25 and 8 of the American Convention; d) the right of access to justice as a right to a prompt response by the judicial system; e) the direct applicability of the American Convention in the domestic law and guarantees of non-repetition of libelous facts; and f) the need to enlarge the material content of jus cogens. I. Focus on the Victims Suffering in International Human Rights Law. 2. There are cases of human rights violations which evoke tragedies, revealing the perennial presence of the latter, as inherent to human condition. To remember two precedents, in my Separate Opinion in the case of Bámaca Velásquez v. Guatemala (merit, Judgment of November 25, 2000) before this Court, the famous tragedy of Sophocles´Antigone came to my mind (paragraphs 8-9). In my Separate Opinion in the case of Bulacio v. Argentina (merit and reparations, Judgment of September 18, 2003) I referred to Ajax and to Sophocles’s Philoctetes (paragraphs 8 and 16), to the desperation of Hecuba, by Euripides (paragraph 22), to Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (paragraph 26) and the Eumenides (the last play of the Oresteia trilogy), also by Aeschylus (paragraph 32).1 3. This case Ximenes-Lopes v. Brasil also includes tragic ingredients which immediately remind me of the imperishable and so topical Greek tragedies. I was reminded, e.g., by the testimonial declaration of the victim’s sister (Mrs. Irene Ximenes-Lopes Miranda), during the public hearing on the cas d'espèce before this Court on November 30 and December 1, 2005. The said moving declaration of Irene reminded me of the Electra by Sophocles and by Euripides. Euripides’s Electra was much more inclined towards private justice, while Sophocles’s Electra surrenders, at an earlier time and to a much greater extent, to pain as a result of the notice (although false) of the death of her brother. 4. Sophocles’s Electra faints when she sees in the urn the ashes she thought were her brother’s, Orestes, (they were not), and desperately remembered her affection for him (without knowing that he was alive), before seeking for private justice, which was the usual practice at the time. When touching the said ashes, in tears she regretted: 1 . Euripides, Electra and Other Plays, London, Penguin, 2004 [reed.], pp. 131-174