is usually conducted in a clandestine manner; also, the persons who are subjected to torture are usually deprived of liberty and under the complete control of the authorities, which take as much care as possible of eliminating any incriminating evidence that demonstrates the torture took place. In terms of evidence, witness testimonies can be a very useful form of evidence. The Rules of Procedure of the Commission, at Article 65, provides that testimony can be received from witnesses or experts and it can be done at the initiative of the Commission or at the request of the parties, and it has certain formalities such as taking an oath or solemn promise to tell the truth.19 There are also guarantees of procedural balance, of procedural equality between the parties, that have to do with the time of the depositions and the opportunity for questions, which both the Commission and the Court are very careful to respect in any of its proceedings. I mentioned earlier that it is very unusual to have direct evidence of torture because of the very nature of this crime. Sometimes, however, there are cases where there is sufficient evidence. One case brought before the Commission dealt with three indigenous sisters in the State of Chiapas who were detained at a military checkpoint and raped. This case was unusual because the three sisters were analyzed after the fact by a gynecologist and the report concluded that even twenty days after the facts, they still showed signs of rape.23 And even though these reports were presented internally, the authorities in Mexico did not consider them and the case was thrown out. In fact, the Commission found in favor of the petitioners that rape was committed and it followed its own jurisprudence in the sense that this constitutes torture. But it was very difficult to advance with the case for many years because it was kept at the domestic level, kept within the military justice system. This was ten years ago, I would imagine that this is not the case anymore since Mexico has since reformed its military justice system, specifically when dealing with human rights violations. Specifically on the burden of proof, the petitioner who brings a case or who brings a petition before the System, initially has to prove the presence of the initial requisites, which are exhaustion of domestic remedies, timeliness, and characterization of possible violations. Those are the elements that we look for at the Commission, at the Executive Secretariat, when deciding whether to process a case, whether to initiate processing. Once these elements are considered and the case is declared admissible, when reaching its decision on the merits, again the Commission will require the petitioner to prove the facts of the case. The burden initially rests on the petitioner. There are certain other elements that are characteristic of our system, which is for example the presumption that the alleged facts are true. In the Rules of Procedure of the Commission, Article 38 of the Rules determines that the facts alleged in the petition, the pertinent parts of which have been transmitted to the state, shall be presumed to be true if the state has not provided responsive information during the period set by the Commission.20 There are two main approaches when evidence is not available in cases of torture in the Inter-American System. One of them consists of establishing that there is a systematic practice of that type of violation during a given time period and in that place. Both the Commission and the Court have taken the facts of the individual case, linking those facts to the systematic practice, which is already established. The systematic practice can be established by general reports, the Commission’s own findings using its general monitoring functions. Once it is determined that the facts fit that conduct and that case, the Commission can use presumptions to conclude and to find that the violations did take place. The way the state can defend itself is by providing a full account, a full investigation, documentation, everything to prove that the contrary of the allegations of the petitioners is true. But absent such information or such evidence, the Commission will find or will establish that the facts fit the conduct that did take place when faced with an individual petition. The case of Ines Fernández Ortega, which I mentioned earlier, involves an indigenous woman who alleged that she was raped by military personnel in the state of Guerrero, Mexico.24 In their decisions on that case, both the Commission and the Court, respectively, took into account the situation, the context, and the type of conduct of the military authorities in that region of the country, as well as the situation of vulnerability of indigenous persons and especially women. When looking specifically at the burden of proof in that case, the Court found that more than eight years had gone by after the incident and that the state provided no evidence contradicting the fact that Ms. Fernández Ortega was raped. Thus, the Court found that the burden of proof was on the state to disprove the accusations concerning its responsibility and that it could not defend itself based simply on lack of sufficient, clear, direct, or complete information. The Court found that the state had to provide conclusive information to disprove the facts—it had the full burden of proof and because of its conduct the state did not meet its burden of proof and therefore the Commission and the Court found that the state was responsible. This is one of the approaches that has to deal with looking at the systematic violations or looking at the context in a given place and fitting the specific case into those facts. The Inter-American Court also has applied presumptions in its very first landmark decision: in Velásquez Rodriguez, the Court found that the silence of the state or the lack of direct response or its ambiguity may be interpreted as an acceptance of the allegations of the plaintiff.21 And the Court in another case, this time against Guatemala, established that when the state does not provide a specific reply to the allegations, it is presumed that the facts about which it remains silent are true provided the consistent conclusions about them be inferred from the evidence presented.22 That is, the state cannot simply limit itself to respond in an evasive way, because the Court or the Commission in a given case can interpret that silence or that evasion as the facts being true in the case. In analyzing the evidence, the Inter-American Court has followed international jurisprudence that gives courts the power to weigh the evidence freely, although this jurisprudence has always avoided a rigid position regarding the amount of proof necessary to support a judgment. That is, it is left to each individual case where the Commission and the Court can analyze the standard of proof on the basis of the rules of logic and the experience of the judges or the Commissioners themselves. 36