2
the Convention, which included specific recommendations for the State. The report was
notified to Brazil on May 24, 2007, and the State was granted two months to provide
information on the actions taken to implement the Commission’s recommendations. Despite
an extension granted to the State, the time limit for presenting information on compliance
with the recommendations expired without the Commission receiving any information. Given
the failure to implement the recommendations contained in Report on Admissibility and
Merits No. 13/07 satisfactorily, the Commission decided to submit the case to the
jurisdiction of the Court, considering that it represented an important opportunity to develop
inter-American case law on the State’s obligation to conduct criminal investigations into
extrajudicial executions, and to examine the application of norms and principles of
international law and the effects of non-compliance with them on the proper conduct of
criminal proceedings, as well as the need to combat impunity. The Commission appointed
Clare K. Roberts, Commissioner, and Santiago A. Canton, Executive Secretary, as
delegates, and Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, Deputy Executive Secretary, and Lilly Ching and
Andrea Repetto, lawyers, as legal advisers.
2.
According to the Commission, the application refers to the alleged “responsibility [of
the State] arising from the failure to comply with the obligation to investigate and punish
the murder of Sétimo Garibaldi on November 27, 1998, [during] an extrajudicial operation
to evict families of landless workers, who were occupying a hacienda in the municipality of
Querencia del Norte, in the state of Paraná”.
3.
In the application, the Commission asked the Court, based on its temporal
competence, to declare the State responsible for the violation of Articles 8 (Right to a Fair
Trial) and 25 (Right to Judicial Protection) of the American Convention, in relation to the
general obligation to respect and ensure human rights and the obligation to adopt legislative
and other domestic measures established in Articles 1(1) and 2 of the Convention,
respectively, and also taking into consideration the provisions of the Federal Clause
contained in Article 28 of this instrument, to the detriment of Iracema Cioato Garibaldi,
Sétimo Garibaldi’s widow, and her six children. The Commission asked the Court to order
the State to adopt specific measures of reparations.
4.
On April 11, 2008, the organizations, Justiça Global, RENAP, Terra de Direitos,
Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) and MST (hereinafter “the representatives”) presented
their brief with pleadings, motions and evidence (hereinafter “the pleadings and motions
brief”), in the terms of Article 23 of the Rules of Procedure. In this brief, they asked the
Court to declare the violation of the rights to life and to personal integrity of Sétimo
Garibaldi, and to judicial guarantees and judicial protection of Iracema Garibaldi and her six
children, established in Articles 4, 5, 8 and 25 of the Convention, respectively, all in relation
to Articles 1(1), 2 and 28 thereof. Consequently, they requested the Court to order various
measures of reparation. Iracema Garibaldi, Darsônia Garibaldi Guiotti, Itamar José
Garibaldi, Itacir Caetano Garibaldi and Vanderlei Garibaldi appointed the lawyers of Justiça
Global, Andressa Caldas, Luciana Silva Garcia, Renata Verônica Cortes de Lira and Tamara
Melo as their legal representatives by powers of attorney granted on July 10, 2007.
5.
On July 11, 2008, the State presented a brief in which it filed four preliminary
objections, answered the application and made observations on the pleadings and motions
brief (hereinafter “answer to the application”). The State asked the Court to consider
founded the preliminary objections and, consequently: (i) to acknowledge its lack of
competence ratione temporis to examine alleged violations that took placed before Brazil
had accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court; (ii) not to admit, as time-barred, the
pleadings and motions brief of the representatives; (iii) to exclude the alleged failure to
comply with Article 28 of the Convention from the examination of the merits, and (iv) to
declare its lack of competence owing to the failure to exhaust domestic remedies. In
addition, regarding the merits, Brazil alleged that “there is nothing to indicate that the way