73 269. According to the case law of the inter-American system, the right to a competent judge or tribunal “generally prohibits the use of ad hoc, special, or military tribunals or commissions to try civilians for 255 terrorist-related or any other crimes.” The Commission has written that this right is violated when a person is tried by a court established ex post facto to the facts with which the person was charged, thereby changing the jurisdiction that was in effect at the time the events occurred.256 270. Petitioners Aniceto Norín and Pascual Pichún contend that they were tried by tribunals that did not have jurisdiction to hear their case: first, by the Supreme Court of Chile, when it vacated the original verdict of acquittal based on a ground that, under Chilean law, the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to address; and second, by the oral criminal trial court that, in their view, was not the court with jurisdiction on the date the events for which they were prosecuted occurred. 271. The IACHR does not have the authority to determine, under Chile’s domestic law, which judge has jurisdiction to hear a given case or to consider specific factors such as the government’s role as accuser or how this affects issues relating to the competence of the court. Despite that fact, because a violation of Article 8(1) of the American Convention has been alleged, the Commission will determine whether, based on the provisions invoked in the petition and mentioned by the State, the petitioners’ argument has any basis in the American Convention. 272. The petitioners explained that in December 2001, at the time of the fires for which Pascual Pichún and Aniceto Norín were prosecuted, a provision concerning attribution of jurisdiction was in force under Law 18,314 which held that the jurisdiction-related provisions of another law, Law 12,927, would apply in certain circumstances. Under Law 12,927, the competent courts would be justices serving on the appeals courts, acting as single-judge courts; these courts would have jurisdiction to take up criminal cases in which a provincial government or regional intendant was either a complainant or petitioner. However, in 2000 Law 19665 had reportedly eliminated these single-judge courts’ jurisdiction over criminal cases. The law eliminated that clause of the Judiciary Statute that gave such jurisdiction to the justices on appeals court. The petitioners therefore contend that on the date of the events in question no court in Chile had jurisdiction to take up the facts for which Pascual Pichún and Aniceto Norín were prosecuted. 273. The Commission observes that this argument appears to be based on a partial assessment of the criminal procedural system in force in Chile at the time of the events. Chile’s new code of criminal procedure entered into force in region IX on December 16, 2000, which was when Law 19,665 also entered into force in Region IX. Law 19,665 was part of the reform and introduced the amendments to the Judiciary Statute. It created oral criminal trial courts (Art. 4), and determined what their composition and territorial jurisdiction would be. Under this law, these courts had material competence to “take up and decide cases involving crimes or misdemeanors” (Article 11, which introduced Article 18 of the Judiciary Statute). As part of the sweeping reform introduced with this Law, its Article 11 introduced amendments to the Judiciary Statute, with the result that justices on the appeals courts no longer had jurisdiction over criminal matters. Thus, as of December 2000, one year before the episodes for which Pascual Pichún and Aniceto Norín were prosecuted, oral criminal trial courts had already been established in region IX, with territorial jurisdiction and the competence to hear criminal cases. 255 IACHR, Report on Terrorism and Human Rights, OEA/SER.L/V/II.116, Doc. 5 rev. 1, corr., October 22, 2002, Executive Summary, paragraph 18. 256 IACHR, Application filed with the Inter-American Court in the Case of García Asto and Ramírez Rojas v. Peru. Cited in: I/A Court H.R., Case of García Asto and Ramírez Rojas v. Peru, Judgment of November 25, 2005 (Preliminary Objection, Merits, Reparations and Costs), Series C No. 137, paragraph 145.