Anzualdo Castro v. Peru
Key Judgment
Legal Relevance
Keywords: Deprivation of Liberty | Evidence | Judicial Protection | Juridical Personality | Jus Cogens | Systemic Practice
Themes: Persons and Groups Affected | Prevention | Characteristics of the Crime | Memory and Reparations
The Court departed from its previous case law in relation to the right to juridical personality, finding that the enforced disappearance of a person is one of the most serious forms of placing a person outside the protection of the law. It noted that this violation entails to deny the disappeared person’s existence and place them in a kind of limbo or uncertain legal situation in violation of the right to juridical personality.
Judgment Date
September 22, 2009
Country
Peru
Judicial Body
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Articles violated
Article 1(1) [ACHR], Article 2 [ACHR], Article 3 [ACHR], Article 4(1) [ACHR], Article 5(1) [ACHR], Article 5(2) [ACHR], Article 7(1) [ACHR], Article 7(6) [ACHR], Article 8(1) [ACHR], Article 25 [ACHR], Article 1 [IACFDP], Article 1(b) [IACFDP], Article 3 [IACFDP]
Articles not violated / not dealt with
Article 13 [ACHR]
Facts of the Case
Mr. Kenneth Ney Anzualdo Castro, a university student, was abducted during his bus-ride home from his university in 1993 by plainclothes police officers. Mr. Anzualdo Castro was forced into a car and taken to the basement of a clandestine detention centre operated by the National Intelligence Service (SIE), where he is presumed to have been tortured and killed. It was alleged that his remains were disposed of in incinerators present in the basement of the facilities. Mr. Anzualdo Castro was alleged by the authorities to have been involved in a terrorist group and his abduction fit within a pattern of forced disappearances of university students at the time.