106. The State, based on arguments that are described below (infra paras. 118 to 120), denied its responsibility, indicating that: Ex officio, and using administrative channels, it has made a serious, responsible and specific effort to investigate the human rights violations that occurred during the military regime, achieving the clarification of the facts and making pecuniary and non-pecuniary reparation to the presumed victims, including Leopoldo García Lucero. * 107. In the following sections, the Court will evaluate the arguments presented in relation to the investigation of the facts and the possibility of Mr. García Lucero and his family members having access to remedies that would allow them to claim individualized measures of reparation. B. Regarding the investigation of the facts B.1) Arguments of the Commission and of the parties 108. The Commission referred to “the absence of an investigation ex officio” as an “essential component” of “the State’s responsibility” in the case. It emphasized that it should be considered that the torture of Mr. García Lucero occurred “in the context of gross and massive human rights violations.” Citing the Court’s case law and decisions of the United Nations Committee against Torture (hereinafter “Committee against Torture”), and also of the European Court of Human Rights, it stated that the State has an obligation to open, ex officio, and immediately an “impartial, independent and thorough investigation, in order to identify and punish those responsible” when “it becomes aware of [torture]” or when they are “reasonable indications of [this].” It stressed that this obligation “cannot depend on a complaint being filed.” In this regard, it argued that the State has been “aware of the allegations of failure to investigate in relation to the torture of Mr. García Lucero at least since November 2004.” It was then that the petition in the case was forwarded to Chile and the report of the Valech Commission was published, which included the presumed victim on the list of victims of torture and “political imprisonment” and, despite this, the State did not open an investigation. Then, in its final written observations, the Commission indicated that even though “the State acknowledged that it had become aware of the torture” in 2004, “it did not take any measure to open an investigation ex officio until 2011. Furthermore, the documents in the file of the proceedings before the Commission, provided to the Court by the Commission, include a note presented to the State authorities by Mr. García Lucero in 1993 in which he described the ill-treatment he had suffered (supra para. 75). 109. The Commission stated also that, regarding the investigation opened in 2011, at April 21, 2013, “no decision had been issued in first instance, and […] according to available information, it was on hold owing to an issue of competence.” 132 It affirmed that “these proceedings have not let to any results; […c]onsequently, […] nine years after the publication of the Valech Commission’s report, […] the State has not made the slightest effort to open and expedite a diligent investigation ex officio.” 110. The representatives indicated that it was only in 2011 that Chile opened an investigation ex officio into the torture of Mr. García Lucero. This meant that it had failed to comply with its international obligations since September 1988, when the Inter-American Convention against Torture entered into force for the State. In this regard, they provided 132 The date indicated corresponds to the presentation of the Commission’s final written observations in which it indicated that “to date” no decision had been taken in first instance in relation to the investigation of the facts. 36