CCPR/C/114/D/2395/2014 2.7 On 26 March 2009, Court No. 19 sentenced the author to 25 years in prison for homicide against 28 persons under especially aggravated circumstances and in repeated offences. The Court found that the failure to locate the bodies of the victims and the fact that the details could not be accurately establi shed were not impediments to a finding that the victims had been murdered and were dead. On the other hand, the charge of enforced disappearance of persons brought by the Public Prosecution Service could not succeed, since this offence had only just been defined under article 21 of Act No. 18026 of 25 September 2006 and that, under the principle of non retroactivity of the criminal law, that Act could not apply to events that had occurred prior to its entry into force. However, the Court also noted that off ences “committed during the de facto Government in a context of State terrorism, in a systematic, planned fashion and on a massive scale, such as enforced disappearance, killings [...] include practices deemed by international law to be crimes against huma nity, which are not subject to the statute of limitations and whose prosecution is mandatory for all States”; and that, under international law, provisions on limitation that were intended to prevent the investigation, prosecution and punishment of those r esponsible for serious violations of human rights were inadmissible, and the State could therefore not invoke them in order to evade its obligation to prosecute and punish those responsible. Moreover, even on the basis of the State party’s criminal law, the statute of limitations did not apply to the criminal offences being prosecuted, given that the period of limitation should have started to run on 1 March 1985, since in the years from 1973 to 1985 while the regime was in place, legal action of any kind i n this regard was impossible; that the limitation period should have been extended by one third, in accordance with article 123 of the Criminal Code, owing to the dangerousness of the author, given the gravity of the facts under investigation and the natur e of his motives; and that there was a prior case involving the author that interrupted the period of limitation. Lastly the Court concluded that there was sufficient evidence to establish the author’s criminal liability. 2.8 The author appealed the judgement in the Criminal Appeal Court (Second Rota). The author reiterated his claims, arguing that the offences he was accused of had lapsed under Act No. 15848, just as the Supreme Court had found in another case in relation to other facts, 2 and that, accordingly, the power and duty of the State to prosecute certain criminal offences had been extinguished with effects identical to an amnesty law, and the case was therefore res judicata; that the offence of homicide was time-barred, whether the limitation period ran from 1976 or from 1985; that the application of article 123 of the Criminal Code in his case was unreasonable, if his age and state of health were taken into account; that the provisions regarding the non applicability of the statute of limitations to certain crimes that were contained in international treaties ratified by the State party could not be applied to the offence of homicide; that all his actions during the period in question had been taken in compliance with superior orders in a military structure; that there was a procedural error in the weighing of evidence in respect of the offence of homicide; that the statements of witnesses contradicted one another; and that no causal relationship between the facts and his guilt had been proved. 2.9 The author claims that, on 19 October 2009, in other proceedings to which he was not a party, the Supreme Court for the first time declared articles 1, 3 and 4 of Act No. 15848 unconstitutional and found that they were not applicable in that case. 3 Since then, the Supreme Court has ruled both ways on the constitutionality of those articles. The author maintains that a Supreme Court finding of unconstitutionality in respect of a legal provision in a specific case does not have general effect. __________________ 2 3 4/13 The author refers to Supreme Court judgement No. 332 of 2005 ( Gelman case). The author refers to Supreme Court judgment No. 365 (Sabalsagaray Curuchet Blanca Stela case). GE.15-13662