A Voice For the Voiceless

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The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

About the Recent Findings in the Military Base "Los Cabitos" (Ayacucho)

April 28th, 2008, Lima

Last week, the forensic work conducted on the anti-subversive base number 51 "Los Cabitos" was made public (April 26 and 27, Diary "La República"). Given the importance of the events that occurred on this base, which are related to the period of political violence, we express that:
 
1. The Director of the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML), Luis Bromley, declares that the forensic operation has been conducted in "coordination" with the representative of the Office of the Prosecutor in charge of the case. This affirmation, which is reiterative of the way the IML Director qualifies the relationship among these institutions, does not correspond to what is stated by law. Both national laws and doctrine state clearly that the one in charge of directing the necessary investigations is the Prosecutor (or the Judge, if the case is already at a judiciary stage). The actors participating as experts, both from the State or from private institutions, are subordinates to this director, and cannot act as equals, a situation that can be implied from the aforementioned declarations. This ignorance of the Prosecutor's attributions constitutes an explicit inobservance of the laws that rule the operators of the judicial system.
 
2. The publication of evidence from the operation (a situation that has already happened on previous occasions) breaks the principle of reserve of the process, and reflects once again ignorance of the attributions and functions that can be exercised by the representatives of the Office of the Prosecutor.  Making these elements public can invalidate the value of the evidence as judiciary proof.
 
3. The public declarations about probable death causes constitute, in the same way, another aspect that goes against the obligation of reserve that every expert must observe in any kind of diligence ordered by an operator of our judicial system.
 
4. The assignation of penal figures applicable to the events that could be related to the forensic operation is an exercise that does not correspond to a technical assistant, but only to the Prosecutors and Judges related to the investigation and process.
 
In light of the facts here stated, EPAF affirms its conviction that respect and observance of the attributions of the Office of the Prosecutor and the Office of the Judiciary are mandatory to the search of truth and the reinforcement of democracy.