28 in poor neighborhoods, were engaged in low-income activities, or were students.84 The “brutality of the violence used,” the presence of “signs of sexual abuse” on the corpses or their mutilation has also been indicated as “characteristic of many of the cases of the women victims of murder.”85 Also that “[m]any of [the] women were kidnapped and, in some cases, were retained for hours, or even days, before being murdered.”86 Expert witness Ana Carcedo Cabañas indicated that the “Guatemala Judiciary acknowledge[d] the existence of this disproportionate cruelty in the deaths of women.”87 79. In keeping with the above, the Inter-American Commission’s April 2001 report stated that, at that time, violence against women was “a serious problem in the country,” and that “although [at that time it was] difficult to estimate the depth and breadth of the problem with precision, it [was] reported that violence based on gender [was] a leading cause of death and disability among women between 15 and 44 years of age.”88 The State indicated that the “statistics may be correct.” 80. It is also worth noting that the Office of the Ombudsman, a State body, has linked the existence of violent acts perpetrated against women in 2001 to “the discrimination that is culturally-rooted in Guatemalan society,” and has considered that this violence is inserted in the context of discrimination against women in Guatemala in different spheres. 89 The against women, its causes and consequences, Yakin Ertürk, supra, para. 28. With regard to the observation on Guatemala City and Escuintla, the number of incidents that occurred in the former, at least in 2003, quadrupled that of the latter. Cf. Office of the Guatemalan Ombudsman, “Informe Anual Circunstanciado 2003,” Guatemala, January 2004, p. 16 (file of annexes to the motions and arguments brief, annex 106, fs. 11,153 to 11,878). 84 Amnesty International, “Guatemala. No protection, no justice: killings of women”, supra, p. 7. 85 Cf. Amnesty International, “Guatemala. No protection, no justice: killings of women”, supra, p. 8. It should also be indicated that, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions recognized the constant increase in murdered women since 2001, and stated that “[a] study by the [Office of the Ombudsman] […] showed that, among those murder victims who experienced torture or abuse, the acts committed by the perpetrators were generally similar whether the victim was male or female.[…] The one notable distinction was that while 15 per cent of the female corpses showed signs of sexual abuse, none of the male corpses did. Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston. Mission to Guatemala, UN Doc. A/HRC/4/20/Add.2, 19 February 2007, paras. 22 and 26 (file of annexes to the motions and arguments brief, annex 75, fs. 10,463 to 10,489). The Guatemalan Ombudsman, when establishing a profile for the violent deaths of women (in which he did not include gender-based murders), indicated that they were “[d]eaths with extrajudicial characteristics or characteristics of social cleansing” “because the corpses bear signs of torture, coup de grâce, ropes around feet and hands, and reveal a professional modus operandi. […] A specific characteristic is that the corpses appear in a place other than that of the victim’s residence. They are committed by illegal clandestine groups linked directly or indirectly to State agencies or to gangs involved in organized crime.” Guatemalan Ombudsman, “Compendio ‘muertes violentas de mujeres’ 2003 a 2005,” p. 22 (file of attachments to the Merits Report, annex 36, fs. 581 to 718). 86 Amnesty International, “Guatemala. No protection, no justice: killings of women”, supra, p. 8. 87 The expert witness stated that the Guatemalan Judiciary considered that “this perpetration of excessive violence, before, at the time of, or after the criminal act […] reveals special cruelty towards the body of the women, which constitutes an element that differentiates it from simple murder.” 88 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Fifth Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Guatemala,” supra, para. 41. Regarding the age of the victims, expert witness María Eugenia Solís García stated that “[m]ost of the victims are adolescents and women under 40 years of age.” Cf. Expert opinion of María Eugenia Solís García, supra. 89 Cf. Office of the Ombudsman of Guatemala, “Informe Anual Circunstanciado 2001”, Guatemala, January 2002, pp. 44 to 46 (file of annexes to the motions and arguments brief, annex 105, fs. 10,968 to 11,151). This document indicates that discrimination “historically […] has excluded [women] from the enjoyment of fundamental rights and, therefore, they are victims of harassment, ill-treatment and violence.” In addition, “the existence of social, economic and political conditions that keep women in a condition of inequality in relation to men” has been indicated as a possible explanation for the increase in the murder of women in Guatemala. Conflict Analysis Resource Center (CERAC), “Guatemala en la encrucijada. Panorama de una violencia transformada,” supra, p. 106. Similarly, Amnesty International, in a report that refers to data for 2000 to 2003, considers “the patriarchal culture to be a specific cause [of the] phenomenon [of the violence]” in Guatemala. The report explains that “[t]he patriarchal system established by a pattern of a mainly masculine exercise of power and domination easily places women in a vulnerable position.” Amnesty International, “Informe de crímenes contra mujeres en Guatemala”, August 2004, pp. 11 and 13 (file of annexes to the motions and arguments brief, annex 52, fs. 5,512 to 5,525).