State to deal with such a matter. Due diligence obliges the State concerned to act and react with the dispatch required to ensure the effectiveness of available remedies. 153. The second area of laxity lies in the fact that the authorities concerned never sought to explore other areas of investigation particularly those mentioned by the Independent Commission of Enquiry in May 1999, such as the conflicts between Norbert Zongo and the poachers and graziers in his ranch or the fact of his poisoning shortly before his assassination. In that regard, the Respondent's explanation that failure on the part of the authorities to explore other Commission areas of investigation due to the fact that the findings of the said had excluded the aforesaid avenues of investigation (supra, paragraph 149), is not convincing. Firstly, the work of the Commission, and hence possibly its own shortcomings, call to question the international responsibility of the Respondent State, as it is the State that set up the Commission, which was operating on its behalf. Moreover, the Respondent State had failed to establish that under Burkinabe law or other legal instruments creating and organizing the ICE, the Police and the Ministry of Justice of that country were bound Burkinabé Criminal by the findings of the Commission. Procedure Code, the said institutions, On the contrary, under the particularly the Ministry of Justice, does have extensive powers of investigation. As a matter of fact, article 40 of the Code clearly provides that the “Prosecutor of Faso shall direct or cause to be directed that all the necessary action be taken to seek out and prosecute any offences against the Penal Code”. 154. The third weakness is the late hearing of the suit in respect of damages. As stated earlier, it was only in May 2006, close to eight years after the incident and only a few months before the end of court proceedings, that the civil suit was heard for the first time by the Investigating Magistrate (supra, paragraph 102), whereas the civil parties had complained and sought damages as early as 6 January 1999 (supra, paragraph 16). Diligence would certainly have required that they be heard at the early stages of the investigation regardless of the outcome. 43

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