28 to the date on which the alleged facts [of the instant case] occurred,” it should make the corresponding clarification and specify the exact sources that allow this. The Court’s case law in the Velásquez Rodríguez, Godínez Cruz and Blake cases is in error when it applies the conducted defined as a crime in the 1994 Convention in cases that preceded that definition. Arguments of the Commission 98. The Inter-American Commission requested the Court “to reaffirm jurisdiction” and “to declare [that this objection is] inadmissible.” It argued that: its a) In this case, it is not asking the Court to apply the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, but to use this instrument to define the concept of forced disappearance. The definition of forced disappearance was not established by this Convention, but is “a series of grave human rights violations protected by the American Convention,” which has been widely developed in international legal doctrine and practice; b) The continuing nature of forced disappearance does not arise from the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance; it had this characteristic previously. The Convention gave a form to the practice and interpretation of domestic law in the hemisphere and the organs of the inter-American protection system. The Convention merely reflects and gives shape to something that already existed in inter-American legislation in force; c) The concept of forced disappearance is not being applied retroactively, because it had been defined and developed by international law, owing to the regrettable reality of previous decades. Otherwise, the victims of forced disappearance would lack juridical protection under the American Convention. The application of the concept of forced disappearance of persons in cases such as Velásquez Rodríguez “was a critical landmark in the development of international human rights law”; d) “The Salvadoran State erroneously attempts to apply a principle of criminal law (nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali) to the proceeding before the Inter-American Court, when the latter has indicated repeatedly the differences between the criminal proceeding and the way in which the protection organs of the inter-American system function”; e) Accepting “the argument of the Salvadoran State [would] be equivalent to saying that, prior to 1994, forced disappearance of persons was allowed or, at least, not prohibited by the American Convention and international law”; and f) Forced disappearance existed as a pattern of conduct that violated numerous rights established in the American Convention. Arguments of the representatives of the alleged victims and their next of kin