Messrs. Velandia Hurtado and Ortega Araque, the Delegate attaches full credibility to the deposition of Mr. Garzón Garzón made on 22 February 1991 (pp. 21 to 26 of decision). (".. se decretaron pruebas de oficio mediante autos del 27 de febrero y 4 de abril de 1995"), the matter has been reserved for judgment. 6.5 In a further submission dated 14 July 1995, the State party forwards copies of the decision of the National Delegate for Human Rights of 5 July 1995, as well as of the judgment of the Administrative Tribunal of Cundinamarca of 22 June 1995. – The Delegate rejects as unfounded the defendants' charge that the disciplinary procedure did not meet all the requirements of due process. In particular, she dismisses Mr. Velandia's Hurtado's defence that since he did not give the order for the victim's disappearance and death, he should not be held responsible. Rather, the Delegate concludes that as the commanding officer for intelligence and counterintelligence activities of his military unit, Mr. Velandia Hurtado "had both the duty, the power and the opportunity to prevent this crime against humanity" (... "tenía el deber, y poder y la oportunidad de evitar que se produjera este crimen contra la humanidad"). 6.6 The salient points of the decision of the National Delegate for Human Rights (entitled "Resolución 13 de Julio 5 de 1995 mediante la cual se falla el proceso disciplinario 008-147452"), after recalling the facts and the procedure from 3 March 1994 to the spring of 1995, are the following: – The Delegate rejects Col. (now Brigadier General) Velandia Hurtado's defence that disciplinary action against him falls under the applicable statute of limitations, and that the National Delegate for Human Rights was not competent to hear the case. Similar defence arguments put forth by Sgt. Ortega Araque are equally rejected. – The Delegate concludes that by virtue of his failure to prevent Nydia Bautista's disappearance and assassination, Mr. Velandia Hurtado violated her rights under articles 2, 5, 11, 12, 16, 28, 29 and 30 of the Colombian Constitution, under articles 3, 4, 6, 7 and 17 of the American Convention on Human Rights and articles 6, 9, 14 and 16 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. By his action, Mr. Velandia Hurtado further violated his duties as a military official and contravened article 65, Section B) lit. a) and article 65, Section F) lit. a) of the Rules of Military Discipline of the Armed Forces (Reglamento Disciplinario para las Fuerzas Armadas). – The Delegate characterizes the phenomenon of forced disappearance in general as a violation of the most basic human rights enshrined in international human rights instruments, such as the right to life and the right to liberty and personal physical integrity, considered to be part of jus cogens and/or of customary international law. – On the basis of the evidence placed before it, the Delegate considers the abduction and subsequent detention of Nydia Bautista as illegal ("la captura de Nydia E. Bautista fue abiertamente ilegal por cuanto no existía orden de captura en su contra y no fue sorprendida en flagrancia cometiendo delito alguno"). – Similar conclusions are reached for the responsibility of Sgt. Ortega Araque. In particular, the Delegate rejects Mr. Ortega's defence that he was only carrying out the orders of a superior, since obedience "cannot be blind" ("la obediencia no puede ser ciega"). – The disappearance must be attributed to State agents, who failed to inform about the victim's apprehension and her whereabouts, in spite of investigations of the military authorities to locate Ms. Bautista: "The victim's abduction was not brought to the attention of any authority and is not certified in any register" ("... sobre su retención no se informó a ninguna autoridad y tampoco apareció registrada in ningún libro"). 6.7 As the Delegate found no mitigating circumstances for the acts respectively omissions of Messrs. Velandia Hurtado and Ortega Araque, she requested their summary dismissal from the Armed Forces. The decision was transmitted to the Minister for the Armed Forces. 6.8 The principal points made in the Judgment of the Administrative Tribunal of Cundinamarca of 22 June 1995 may be summarized as follows: – The Delegate qualifies as credible and beyond reasonable doubt the evidence of Nydia Bautista's violent death, after being subjected to illtreatment, in particular on the basis of the report prepared by the Office of Special Investigations (Oficina de Investigaciones Especiales) after the exhumation of her remains (pp. 18 to 20 of the decision). – The Tribunal considers the complaint filed by Nydia Bautista's family admissible in its form. It rejects the argument of the Ministry of Defence that the charges fall under the applicable statute of limitations (five years), since the case concerns not only the victim's disappearance but also her torture and death; on the latter, there could only have been certainty after exhumation of the body in July 1990. – Despite the challenges to the testimony of Bernardo Garzón Garzón put forward by 106