the forensic anthropologists had exhumed a total of 84 corpses from 21 graves. An additional grave site was identified during the field work and, once the legal formalities had been met, the EAFG was able to examine it, and exhume four sets of human remains, in August 1996. On 2 September 1996, Ombudsman Jorge Mario García Laguardia issued a historic resolution in which he denounced the massacre of Plan de Sánchez (and two others that took place in Rabinal the same year: Chichupac and Río Negro) as crimes against humanity, laid the blame for them firmly at the feet of the government and the military, and said that they had been carried out as part of a premeditated state policy. In May 1997, the villagers named as plaintiffs in the criminal investigation gave the authorities a list of names of soldiers and patrolmen who had been involved in the massacre. In June 1997, their legal representatives the Centro para Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (CALDH) requested ballistic tests on the spent cartridges found in the graves; the ballistic material was reported as "lost" by the prosecution service and did not resurface until February 2000. Following sustained efforts by victims and CALDH, and the appointment of a new Attorney General in Guatemala, five direct perpetrators were convicted in domestic criminal proceedings and in October 2012 their conviction was upheld on appeal. Supranational legal proceedings In October 1996, faced with constant delays and other irregularities in the domestic proceedings, the survivors instructed their legal representatives in both national and supranational proceedings, the Centro para Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (CALDH), to lodge a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The IACHR is the agency of the Organisation of American States charged with overseeing the American Convention on Human Rights, a continental human rights instrument that Guatemala ratified in 1978, and responsible for ensuring justice for victims of human rights abuses when domestic legal systems fail. In their filing, they accused the Guatemalan state of violating the victims' human rights by allowing its agents to kill civilian men, women, and children and by failing to respond to that situation with measures of judicial protection and guarantees. Guatemala replied to the petition by stating that during the armed conflict both parties committed abuses, and that events such as those in Plan de Sánchez stand as testimony to that fact. It went