Molina Theissen v. Guatemala
Key Judgment
Legal Relevance
Keywords: Duty to Investigate | Children/Youth | Relatives as Victims | Right to Know the Truth
Themes: Persons and Groups Affected | Search | Prevention | Justice and Truth
The Court ordered the State to create an expeditious procedure to obtain a declaration of absence and presumption of death due to enforced disappearance and adopt the legislative, administrative and any other measures necessary to create a genetic information system.
Judgment Date
May 4, 2004
Country
Guatemala
Judicial Body
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Articles violated
Article 1(1) [ACHR], Article 4 [ACHR], Article 5(1) [ACHR], Article 5(2) [ACHR], Article 7 [ACHR], Article 8(1) [ACHR], Article 25 [ACHR], Article 1 [IACPPT], Article 2 [IACPPT], Article 6 [IACPPT], Article 8 [IACPPT]
Articles not violated / not dealt with
Article 3 [ACHR]
Facts of the Case
Mr. Marco Antonio Molina Theissen was a 14-year-old student. On 6 October 1981, he and his mother were at home when two armed men entered the house. Before leaving, they restrained Mr. Molina Theissen with shackles, covered his head with a sack and took him away in the back of a pick-up truck with official number plates. In the context of the internal conflict in Guatemala at the time, the Molina Theissen family was considered "subversive" by the State, as most of the family members had been involved with groups critical of the government. It is believed that Mr. Molina Theissen's enforced disappearance was a reprisal, because a week earlier his sister, a militant of the Patriotic Youth of Labour, had escaped after having been arrested, tortured and held in illegal custody.