Mohamed did not have, under law, a remedy to protect his right to appeal his conviction,
he made use of the special federal appeal because it was the only remedy available to
try to challenge his conviction. It is also pertinent to refer to the motion for review, since
it was the procedural means to challenge the denial of the special federal appeal and,
therefore, also compromised Mr. Mohamed’s possibilities of having the right to appeal
the judgment. As for the motion for revocation filed by Mr. Mohamed's defense attorney
before the Supreme Court of Justice (supra paras. 59 and 60), the Court considers that
it is not appropriate to rule on this matter, since it was not a procedural means available
to Mr. Mohamed given that, according to the Supreme Court of Justice, “[its] judgments
[...] are not subject to reversal or revocation” (supra para. 60).
107. The Court considers it necessary to emphasize that, even when analyzing
whether these remedies would have effectively protected Mr. Mohamed’s right to appeal
his conviction, due to the regulations of the special federal appeal (supra paras. 51 and
103), the nature and extent of the grievances filed by the Mr. Mohamed’s defense was
conditioned a priori to the procedural grounds of that recourse. These grounds per se
limited Mr. Mohamed’s chances of raising grievances calling for a broad and effective
examination of the challenged conviction. Therefore, it should be noted that such a
limitation negatively impacts the effectiveness that this remedy could have in practice.
108. Likewise, the Court notes that the ruling by the Supreme Court of Justice which
rejected the motion for review, did so stating only that “the special appeal, whose denial
prompt[ed] the […] motion, [was] inadmissible (Article 280 of the Code of Civil and
Commercial Procedure” (supra para. 58). The Court considers that the fact that the
remedy had been rejected based on Article 280 of the Code of Civil and Commercial
Procedure makes the accessibility of the recourse uncertain, since this provision enables
the unsubstantiated denial of the recourse, so that those who turn to the justice system,
in this case Mr. Mohamed, do not know the reasons why they were unable to have
access to that procedural mechanism. This was clearly expressed by Mr. Mohamed’s
defense in his grounds for the request for revocation, submitted after the motion for a
review was rejected (supra para. 59), in which he stated that “[t]here is no parameter or
any regulatory element to guide appellants on matters that may be substantive or
transcendent for [the Supreme Court ]. Therefore, it is a situation that is impossible to
assess a priori.”
109. As to the argument put forward by Argentina that in the case of Lori Berenson
Mejía v. Peru, the Court had decided not to examine the merits of a particular claim,
even though the State did not file an objection to the requirement of non-exhaustion of
domestic remedies, the Court makes it clear that in that case it decided not to rule on
the merits of the argument regarding the alleged lack of independence and impartiality
of the judges in the ordinary jurisdiction because the appeal for disqualification to which
there was access had not been filed in a timely manner by the alleged victim’s defense.97
This situation is not present in the case, since the Court considers it proven that Mr.
Mohamed filed the special federal appeal and the motion for review, contemplated in the
legal system to challenge the final judgment, precisely to attempt, through those
channels, to obtain the guarantee of his right to appeal (supra paras. 52 to 58), a
situation to which he was subjected because the legal code did not contemplate an
ordinary appeal to enable him to challenge his conviction. By filing those appeals, Mr.
Mohamed requested that a higher court review his claims against certain issues of law
and fact regarding the challenged conviction, including the principle of non-retroactivity,
and he also made it clear in those recourses that the conviction had been issued for the
first time at the second instance [on appeal] overturning the acquittal issued in the first
instance.
97
Cf. Case of Lori Berenson Mejía v. Peru. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of November 25,
2004. Series C No. 119, paras. 151 to 156.
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