[The Committee on the Rights of the Child] notes with concern that the Organizational Act 7/2000 on terrorism increases the period of police custody … for children accused of terrorism. --CRC/C/15/Add.185, paras. 53-54 (2002). Inter-American System The purpose of the principle of "reasonable time" to which Articles 7(5) and 8(1) of the American Convention refer is to prevent accused persons from remaining in that situation for a protracted period and to ensure that the charge is promptly disposed of…. This Court shares the view of the European Court of Human Rights, which in a number of decisions analyzed the concept of reasonable time and decided that three points should be taken into account in determining the reasonableness of the time in which a proceeding takes place: a) the complexity of the case, b) the procedural activity of the interested party, and c) the conduct of the judicial authorities…. --Suárez Rosero Case, I/A Court H.R., Judgment of November 12, 1997 (paras. 70, 72). ***** The right to the presumption of innocence requires that the duration of preventive detention not exceed the reasonable period of time cited in Article 7.5. Otherwise, such imprisonment takes on the nature of premature punishment, and thus constitutes a violation of Article 8.2 of the American Convention. […] The Commission has examined two factors to determine whether preventive detention in a specific case constitutes a violation of the right to personal freedom and the judicial guarantees set forth in the American Convention. In the first place, the national legal authorities must justify the measure cited pursuant to one of the criteria established by the Commission…. In the second place, when the Commission decides that such justification exists, it must proceed to ascertain whether those authorities have exercised the requisite diligence in discharging the respective duties in order to ensure that the duration of such confinement is not unreasonable. --Case 11.205, Report Nº 2/97, Bronstein case, Annual Report of the IACHR 1997 (paras. 12, 23-24). ***** 50

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