Court/Judicial body:Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Date:21 September 2006
Instrument(s) cited:American Convention on Human Rights
Case summary
Marco Antonio Servellón García (aged 16), Rony Alexis Betancourt Hernández (aged 17), Diómedes Obed García (aged 18), and Orlando Alvarez Ríos (aged 32) were arrested between 15 and 16 September 1995, during an operation conducted by the then Public Security Force of Honduras. The four young men were executed extrajudicially by State agents and, on September 17, 1995, their dead bodies were found outdoors in various parts of the city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The Inter-American Court found breaches of the following rights under the American Convention of Human Rights: the right to life ( Article 4); right to humane treatment ( Article 5); right to personal liberty ( Article 7); right to a fair trial ( Article 8), and right to judicial protection ( Article 25); and, furthermore, as regards Marco Antonio Servellón García and Rony Alexis Betancourt Hernández, the rights of the child ( Article 19). The Court ordered the State to make a number of institutional and social reforms, including: the training of staff working with ‘at-risk’ youth; designing a public awareness campaign to protect children from violence; creating mechanisms to ensure due process in cases of child executions.
Link to full judgement: http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_152_esp.pdf