4
protection and that the State had not taken the measures necessary to effectively
guarantee the life and integrity of the persons for whom the measures were ordered;
Specific measures: concerning the threats
11.
The State’s seventeenth and eighteenth reports, dated May 3 and July 31,
2001, respectively, conveying information concerning Lucía Quilá Colo, Patricia
Ispanel Medinilla and Viviana Rucux Quilá; in its sixteenth report, the State had
indicated that Lucía Quilá Colo was a member of the Commission overseeing
performance of the “friendly settlement agreements” that the State and the
petitioners had concluded. In the seventeenth and eighteenth reports, the State
reported that the Civil Police had been asked to take security measures on behalf of
the individuals in question and had been issued an injunction ordering it to report the
findings of the investigations into the abduction of Viviana Rucux Quilá. In the
eighteenth report, Guatemala stated that in the meeting with Lucía Quilá Colo, the
latter reported that she had not experienced any incident. In its September 20,
2000 comments on the State’s eighteenth report, the Commission pointed out that
the State had not taken effective measures to ascertain the identity of those
responsible for the abduction of Lucía Quilá Colo and Viviana Rucux Quilá. In its
nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first reports, the State made no reference to the
measures of protection being provided for these three people. Finally, in the
Commission’s brief of August 1, 2001, it reported that the beneficiaries of the
provisional measures had been “repeatedly threatened” in the area where most of
the fugitive former patrolmen and their families live.
Specific measures: concerning the investigations
12.
The State’s eighteenth report, dated July 31, 2000, wherein it reported that
Alberto Godínez and María García Domingo had in fact been the target of acts of
“harassment by persons unknown.” Nevertheless, on the last visits made by officials
with the Presidential Coordinating Committee for the Executive’s Human Rights
Policy (hereinafter “COPREDEH”), these officials did not report any threats. The
State made no reference to this matter in its nineteenth and twentieth reports. The
comments the Commission submitted on March 22, June 29 and September 20,
2000 on the State’s sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth reports, respectively,
wherein it asserted that the State did not report any information pertaining to
investigations into the threats and acts of harassment experienced by some of the
beneficiaries of the provisional measures ordered, including the incidents reported
by Natividad Pérez; the recent acts of intimidation that Alberto Godínez and María
García Domingo claim to have experienced; and the criminal proceeding against
Colonel Felipe Miranda Trejo, former commander of Military Base 19 at
Huehuetenango. In its twenty-first report, the State asserted that while María
García Domingo and Alberto Godínez filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s
Office in Huehuetenango concerning certain incidents, those events were
“unrelated[d] to the case for which the provisional measures were ordered.” In its
commentary on this report, the Commission stated that the individuals in question
had been threatened and heard gunfire near their house, which “contradicts the
information that the Government provided in its May 18 report” to the effect that the
complaints were “unrelated[d] to the case for which the provisional measures were
ordered.”
13.
The State’s eighteenth report and the Commission’s comments thereon,
which make reference to an incident wherein unidentified persons broke into the