7 26. A few days later, in an extraordinary period of sessions of this Court held in its central office in Costa Rica, a new chapter on this matter was opened. Due to a blackout in the main building in which the former deliberations room is located, the Court moved to its Library11 building, where there was power (provided by a generator of their own); where it elaborated and adopted its historical Judgment in the case of Barrios Altos (merits), on March 14, 2001. I felt moved at that time, because it was the first time, in contemporary International Law, that an international court (as the Inter-American Court) set forth that amnesty laws (as Peruvian laws No. 26,479 and 26,492) are incompatible with a human rights treaty (as the American Convention) and have no legal effects (operative paragraph No. 4). 27. That is, they are flawed with nullity, ex tunc nullity and ab initio nullity, therefore lacking any and all legal effect. The abovementioned Barrios Altos Judgment is, at present, recognized in the specialized legal bibliography in different continents and in the jusinternationalist circles in the whole world, as a landmark in the history of International Human Rights Law. In that Judgment, the Court stated that - "(...) Amnesty and prescription provisions, and the setting of liability exemptions with the purpose of preventing the investigation and punishment of those responsible for serious violations of human rights such as torture, summary executions, extra-legal or arbitrary executions and forced disappearances are inadmissible, and all of them are prohibited as they contravene rights than cannot be abolished which are recognized by International Human Rights Law. (...) In the light of the general obligations consecrated in Articles 1(1) and 2 of the American Convention, the States Parties have the duty to take all the measures necessary so that nobody is deprived from legal protection and the exercise of the right to an effective and simple remedy, in the terms of Articles 8 and 25 of the Convention. That is why the State Parties of the Convention which adopt laws having this effect, such as the self-amnesty law, commit a violation of Articles 8 and 25, consistently with Articles 1(1) and 2, all included in the Convention. Self-amnesty laws lead to victims defenselessness and to the perpetuation of impunity, so that is why they are patently incompatible with the content and the spirit of the American Convention. This type of law prevents the identification of individuals responsible for violations of human rights, as the investigation and access to justice are hindered, and the victims and their next of kin are prevented from knowing the truth and receive the corresponding remedy” (paras. 41 and 43). 28. In my Concurring Opinion in that Judgment on the merits of Barrios Altos, I pondered that "To sum up, the so called self-amnesties are an inadmissible affront to the right to truth and the right to justice (beginning by the access to justice itself). They are openly incompatible with the general obligations –those that cannot be dissociated- of the States Parties of the American Convention to protect and guarantee the human rights the latter protects, assuring their free and full exercise (in the terms of Article 1(1) of the Convention), and also the adaptation of their domestic law to the international rules and regulations of protection (in the terms of Article 2 of the Convention). Furthermore, they affect those rights protected by the Convention, particularly the rights to a fair trial (Article 8) and the legal protection (Article 25). With respect to self-amnesty laws, we have to bear in mind that their legality within the scope of domestic law, as they lead to impunity and injustice, are in flagrant incompatibility with the protection rules and regulations of International Human Rights Law, thus entailing de jure violations of human rights. The corpus juris of International Human Rights Law emphasizes that not everything that is legal within the domestic legal system is so in the international legal system, especially when higher values are at stake (such as truth and justice). Actually, the so called amnesty laws, particularly the perverse modality of the so called self-amnesty laws, although considered laws under a certain domestic legal system, are not so in the scope of International Human Rights Law. (...) 11 At present, Joint Library with the Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos (IIDH), that I was pleased to open.