Neira-Alegría et al. v. Peru. Series C No. 20

Key paragraph(s) can be found below the document.

60. In the terms of Article 5(2) of the Convention, every person deprived of her or his liberty has the right to live in detention conditions compatible with her or his personal dignity, and the State must guarantee to that person the right to life and to humane treatment. Consequently, since the State is the institution responsible for detention establishments, it is the guarantor of these rights of the prisoners.

62. It has been shown that the government, in failing to comply with its obligation to protect human life, gave orders which resulted in an unjustifiable number of deaths . . . The military force used was disproportionate in relationship to the actual danger present, and no precautionary measures were put into effect to reduce the human cost of crushing the riot (supra para. 43).