E/CN.4/2000/9/Add.1 page 9 37. The Rapporteurs had recommended that the remains of those who might have been victims of extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions should be exhumed and examined by forensic experts. The Government reported that the Attorney-General s Office, through the Criminal Investigation Department and the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, systematically exhumed unidentified bodies. Exhumations were also performed by forensic experts in all cases of violent death, in accordance with article 335 of the Penal Code. 38. As to the military justice system, the Rapporteurs recommended that the Code be reformed to make a clear distinction between those who carried out operational activities and the military judiciary, who should not be part of the normal chain of command. It should provide for verification that those responsible for the investigation and prosecution of cases were entirely independent of the normal military hierarchy and should eliminate the principle of due obedience in cases of execution, torture and enforced disappearances, crimes which should be explicitly excluded from military jurisdiction. It should permit claims for criminal indemnification, and conflicts of jurisdiction between civil and military courts should be resolved by independent judges. 39. The Government reported that it had sent to Congress a bill on the structural reform of the military justice system. Contrary to the previous rules, under which the function of acting as judge fell to the accused’s hierarchical superior, the bill requires judges to be dedicated exclusively to the administration of justice, and the military criminal justice system to be organizationally independent of the chain of command. The Government was also framing a draft statute supplementing the draft Military Criminal Code which would require judges or magistrates in the military criminal justice system to be qualified criminal lawyers. 40. On the principle of due obedience as set forth in article 91 of the Political Charter, the draft Military Criminal Code establishes that “members of the Armed Forces are duty bound both to obey legitimate orders issued by their superiors subject to the requisite legal formalities and not to obey orders which are self-evidently illegal”, thus not exonerating them from responsibility in the event of presumed violations of fundamental human rights. 41. Action for criminal indemnification was also a new addition to the draft Military Criminal Code, allowing the claimant for indemnification (parte civil) to appeal against rulings waiving or diminishing the responsibility of the accused and to request that evidence be produced. 42. The draft also establishes that cases of torture, enforced disappearances, genocide, crimes that constitute gross human rights violations, crimes against sexual freedom and human dignity and the offence of aiding and abetting are to be tried on the basis of the Penal Code, not the Military Criminal Code. Crimes against humanity still fall under ordinary criminal jurisdiction. Additionally, the draft Code makes offences of enforced disappearance and genocide, increases the penalty for torture and lays down firm rules for the protection of human life and physical integrity, especially with regard to crimes of enforced disappearance (committed by individuals or public servants), genocide and torture. To come into line with internationally recognized human rights principles, fast-acting, flexible mechanisms have been sought for dealing with all such cases.