this case. Those observations were conveyed to the Government of Chile on February 16, 1988, which was given thirty days within which to reply. 20. The note from the Government of Chile, dated March 7, 1988, expressing its view that the complainant’s observations concerned its statement before the General Assembly and not the proceedings relevant to the case, and that the preparation of observations required a longer period than the thirty days. That note further reiterates that at issue was “a case that is clearly sub judice,” and therefore “the internal remedies have by no means been exhausted…” 21. The observations of the Government of Chile in resolution 01a/88, provisionally approved by the IACHR during its 72nd session, and forwarded on March 30, 1988. CONSIDERING: 1. That the denunciation received meets the formal admissibility requirements established under Article 32 of the Regulations of the Commission. 2. That there is sufficient proof that on the morning of July 2, 1986, Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri and Carmen Gloria Quintana were arrested by an army patrol in a neighborhood in Santiago, Chile, in the course of a protest demonstration. Violence was used in the arrest, and the patrol seized inflammable material that was going to be used in building a barricade. The two persons in question were burnt and taken to a rural road by the army patrol where they were abandoned. 3. That the discrepancy between the versions of what happened concerns how the fire that caused serious burns to Carmen Gloria Quintana and the death of Rodrigo Rojas started; whereas the victims in question and some witnesses maintained that the fire was intentionally set by a member of the patrol after the head of the patrol had soaked the two parties in question with fuel, the members of the patrol maintained that the fire was accidentally started by a movement made by Carmen Gloria Quintana. 4. That there are direct indications that would lead one to accept the veracity of the version that the fire was deliberately started after two victims were doused with fuel, as they told the Judge of the 19th Criminal Court, and according to the report prepared by Department OS-7 of the Carabineros Police, which discounts the possibility of the fire having started accidentally, and states that the burns could not have been as they were if the clothing had not been soaked with fuel. 5. That the patrol’s conduct in transferring the victims to a distant rural road between 14 and 17 kilometers from the place of the events, and leaving them there in a situation where it was virtually impossible for them to get the kind of help they needed would lead one to believe that the members of the patrol were aware that they had committed a punishable act, and there can be no logical validity to the explanation that they left them there because the services of the patrol were needed elsewhere in the city. 6. That the repeated denial on the part of the military authorities of participation by military personnel in the events would confirm this interpretation, and that once these events could no longer be covered up, they devised the version of the accidental fire, which could have been reported immediately, were the version true. 7. That the remedies of domestic law in this case cannot be considered to be pending, for the following reasons: a. More than twenty months have elapsed since the events that are the object of this case transpired, but as of March 23, 1988, date of the provisional approval of this resolution, there has been no indication Downloaded from worldcourts.com. Use is subject to terms and conditions. See worldcourts.com/terms.htm