12 EXPERT EVIDENCE a) law Expert report by Iván González-Amado, criminal attorney-at- The expert witness explained that Colombian laws on criminal procedure provide for three main stages: preliminary investigation, pre-trial proceedings and trial. He also referred to the powers of the judicial police, which are exercised on a permanent basis by the National Police, the Technical Investigations Agency of the General Prosecutor’s Office and “the civil servants of prosecuting units and the Administrative Department of Security.” Colonel Luis Enciso Barón was barred under Section 103 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1991 “from processing the actions associated with the investigation of the crime of extortion reported by Ricardo Dalel Barón” because the Colonel is his cousin and, “therefore, he [has] an interest in the proceedings.” Wilson Gutiérrez-Soler was not seized in flagrante delicto, but during an illegal police search. Failure to set an accurate and express term for Wilson Gutiérrez-Soler’s appearance before judicial authorities “adversely affected his rights, since it allowed judicial police officers to promptly carry out actions that ultimately impaired his rights.” Domestic legislation prohibits without exceptions that public officers exercise coercion on the accused. Gutiérrez-Soler’s version of the events “was not rendered freely and spontaneously,” since “he was tortured and […] the free and spontaneous statement was not given in agreement with legal rules in force.” Likewise, the change in the legal qualification from crime of torture to crime of bodily injuries does not conform to international legal standards related to torture, because according to said standards “the conduct is not assessed in line with the seriousness of the injuries inflicted upon the victim.” The appointment of “an honorable person as [Wilson Gutiérrez-Soler’s technical counsel] was contrary to the rule of law,” for “the accused was arrested in Bogotá […] where he could have been aided by an attorney who may have acted as legal counsel.” Instead, the clergywoman who acted as counsel “failed to comply with counseling obligations” as she did not even “notice that the accused had been tortured before the examination,” which took place “after the accused was brought to jail and before he rendered statement.” Article 192 of Law No. 906 of 2004 prescribes that acquittals may be reviewed if “after an acquittal is entered in a Court of law in cases of violation of human rights or serious infringement of international humanitarian laws, any international human rights review and control body, whose competence has been formally accepted by the State, finds that the State has failed to complied with its obligation to conduct a serious and impartial investigation of said violations.” B) TESTIMONIAL AND EXPERT EVIDENCE 42. On March 10 and 11, 2005 the Court held in a public hearing to receive the statements of the witnesses and the expert witnesses proposed by the Inter-