Chapter 3 • The Major Regional Human Rights Instruments and the Mechanisms for Their Implementation information on the whereabouts of that person, thereby impeding his or her recourse to the applicable legal remedies and procedural guarantees” (art. II). 3.3.2 The undertakings of the States parties The States parties undertake, in particular, not to practise, permit or tolerate the forced disappearance of persons, even in states of emergency or suspension of individual guarantees; to punish within their jurisdictions those persons who commit or attempt to commit the crime of forced disappearance of persons and their accomplices and accessories; to cooperate with one another in helping to prevent, punish and eliminate the forced disappearance of persons; and to take legislative, administrative, judicial, and any other measures necessary to comply with the commitments undertaken in the Convention (art. I; for further details as to the duty to take legislative measures, see also art. III). The Convention further regulates the duty to establish jurisdiction over cases involving the forced disappearance of persons (art. IV), and provides that such cases shall not be considered political offences for purposes of extradition but shall be deemed extraditable offences (art. V). Moreover, “criminal prosecution for the forced disappearance of persons and the penalty judicially imposed on its perpetrator shall not be subject to statutes of limitations”, unless there is a norm of a fundamental character preventing the application of this rule; in the latter case, however, “the period of limitation shall be equal to that which applies to the gravest crime in the domestic laws of the ... State Party” (art. VII). Quite significantly, persons alleged to be responsible for the acts constituting the offence of forced disappearance of persons “may be tried only in the competent jurisdictions of ordinary law in each State, to the exclusion of all other special jurisdictions, particularly military jurisdictions” (art. IX; emphasis added). As in the case of the torture conventions, exceptional circumstances such as a state of war or any other public emergency cannot be invoked to justify the forced disappearance of persons; in such cases, “the right to expeditious and effective judicial procedures and recourse shall be retained as a means of determining the whereabouts or state of health of a person who has been deprived of freedom, or of identifying the official who ordered or carried out such deprivation of freedom”. In connection with such procedures, “the competent judicial authorities shall have free and immediate access to all detention centres and to each of their units, and to all places where there is reason to believe the disappeared person might be found, including places that are subject to military jurisdiction” (art. X). 3.3.3 The implementation mechanism The Convention provides that “the processing of petitions or communications presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging the forced disappearance of persons shall be subject to the procedures established in the American Convention on Human Rights and to the Statute and Regulations of the ... Commission ... and to the Statute and Rules of Procedure of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, including the provisions on precautionary measures” (art. XIII). An urgent procedure is also provided for cases where the 92 Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers