- 48 - Medina Camacho and Zúñiga Labrador, the former as one of the perpetrators of the murder and the second as an accomplice, and against two officials of the Bogota Town Council. The District Attorney’s office established the disciplinary responsibility of the two sergeants, on whom it imposed a sanction of “severe reprimand” (verbal admonition before the rank and file), and of Herman Arias Gaviría, then Governance Secretary of Bogotá Town Council because, by his omission, “the request for security measures” made by Counselor Aída Abella to ensure the safety of Senator Cepeda and other representatives of the UP “had not been dealt with adequately and opportunely”; he was therefore suspended from the exercise of his functions for 30 days.188 On June 18 and August 3, 1999, in first and second instance respectively, the office of the Attorney General of the Nation confirmed the disciplinary responsibility. 135. The Court reiterates that the mere existence of a disciplinary procedure within the office of the Attorney General of the Nation that can respond, at least indirectly, to cases of human rights violations, clearly serves an important purpose of protection.189 In this way, the Attorney General’s office determined the offenses committed by the two above-mentioned sergeants and the former Governance Secretary of the Bogotá Town Council, even though it did not establish the responsibility of other public officials who were potentially implicated, such as other members of the Armed Forces, even though the July 1997 Evaluation Report had noted the seriousness, complexity and enormity of the facts.190 136. In short, despite the conclusions that the Attorney General’s office reached in its initial report, subsequently, it failed to conduct an effective disciplinary procedure in relation to those other officials and members of the Army who, in one way or another, may have participated in the facts or allowed them to happen, as determined by its own investigation. 137. Regarding the proportionality of the disciplinary sanction imposed on the perpetrators of the murder, it is on record that, in July and August 1999, the Fundación Manuel Cepeda Vargas and the Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo unsuccessfully asked the Minister of Defense at the time and the then President of the Republic that the soldiers be discharged from military service and imprisoned, based on the sentences imposed in the criminal proceedings. However, the Court stresses that, by sanctioning them, as members of the Army, with a “reprimand,” the Attorney General’s office classified the conduct as “extremely serious” and meriting the maximum disciplinary sanction established in the respective Code, which was their discharge from the Army; however, it noted an “inconsistency in the law that causes concern owing to the mildness of the sanctions for criminal acts that call for the most 188 Decision issued by the office of the Second District Attorney of Santafé de Bogotá in case No. 143-6444/96 in 1999, supra note 81, folios 1461 to 1486. 189 Cf. Case of the “Mapiripán Massacre” v. Colombia. Merits, reparations and costs, supra note 22, para. 215; Case of the La Rochela Massacre v. Colombia, supra note 16, para. 215; Case of the Ituango Massacres v. Colombia, supra note 16, para. 333, and Case of the Pueblo Bello Massacre v. Colombia, supra note 136, para. 203. 190 In this report, the office of the Second District Attorney referred to the situation of other people involved, in order to “better illustrate the responsibility” of the officials, summarizing the conclusions of investigations conducted by several departments of the Attorney General’s office (for human rights, special investigations, and the armed forces) when underscoring that, “together with some State agents, individuals who were not agents of the State took part” in the murder. Cf. Evaluation Report by the office of the Second District Attorney of Santafé de Bogotá in case No. 143-6444 of 1997, supra note 96, folios 1416 to 1459.