refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or to disclose the fate and whereabouts of the person concerned.99 129. In order to determine if what happened to Víctor Manuel Isaza constituted forced disappearance, the Commission will assess each of those elements in the light of the established facts, taking into consideration the relevant contexts and the above-described rules on the burden of proof with respect to events that affect persons in State custody. 130. As regards deprivation of liberty, there is no controversy regarding the fact that on November 19, 1987, Mr. Víctor Manuel Isaza Uribe was detained in Puerto Nare jail as part of a criminal proceeding against him. It should be mentioned that deprivation of liberty as a prior step to forced disappearance is not necessarily illegal or arbitrary. The organs of the Inter-American system have examined a variety of cases in which a person's deprivation of liberty, though legal, was a prior step to their disappearance. 131. As for direct involvement of government officials or acquiescence thereof, the Commission notes that this is precisely the point on which the dispute in the case centers. Whereas the State says that there is no evidence that the disappearance of Mr. Isaza Uribe from Puerto Nare jail had anything to do with government officials or state agents, the petitioners claim that the victim was removed from that jail by paramilitaries who acted with the connivance of the State. 132. In that regard, the Commission recalls that, in first place, given that the matter concerned an alleged forced disappearance, it was incumbent upon the State to conduct a thorough investigation of the facts and clarify what occurred. That obligation was strengthened, as mentioned, by the fact that the matter involved a person in its custody. As the Commission concludes below, the State failed in those obligations and, therefore, did not refute its responsibility for what happened to Mr. Isaza Uribe. 133. The Commission notes a variety of evidence that suggests that there was at least acquiescence on the parts of State agents in what happened to Mr. Isaza Uribe. First, as the petitioners have consistently held, there is a witness statement from a detainee, who said that he had recognized one of the individuals who entered the jail on November 19, 1987, as a MAS paramilitary. Second, at the time there were multiple concurrent contexts that made it clear that Mr. Isaza Uribe was in grave danger of attack from paramilitaries, who, according to several above-cited statements (supra par. 57-59) were in the area and in 1987 committed multiple acts of persecution, intimidation, disappearance, and murder of labor leaders, a situation that also led other trade unionists to abandon the region. Thus, the Commission took as proven that there existed a context of violence by agents of the State and paramilitaries against UP members and supporters. The Commission also considered proven that there was a campaign by paramilitaries of persecution and even extermination of trade unionists who belonged to the same entity as Mr. Isaza Uribe, namely, SUTIMAC, specifically in the municipality of Puerto Nare. The Commission notes that within that context, several SUTIMAC members in the same area were murdered or disappeared either while inside or very close to facilities of State security agencies. 134. Added to these two contexts are two regulatory frameworks that the State kept in force at the time of the events, exacerbating the risk to Mr. Isaza Uribe. One concerned the activities of paramilitary groups that gave rise to patterns of joint actions with state agents; the other related to the identification of trade unionists as internal enemies in anti-subversive regulations and manuals. The Commission also regards as proven the fact that in the very municipality where the events occurred, there was a common pattern of joint actions between the Army and the paramilitary groups that dominated the area, particularly with the Bárbula Battalion of the Armed Forces, whose jurisdiction included Puerto Nare. The Commission notes that the report “Traces and Faces of Forced Disappearance” (Huellas y Rostros de la Desaparición Forzada) by the National Center for Historical Memory, points to Mr. Isaza Uribe’s case as a prime example of forced 99 I/A Court H.R, Case of Anzualdo Castro v. Peru. Preliminary Objection, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of September 22, 2009. Series C, No. 202, par. 60.