A/HRC/7/39 page 10 19. There is a growing consensus regarding the need for new professional and technical resources for the Attorney General’s Office, the Procurator General and the judicial system. There must also be renewed national and international political support in order to reinforce the judicial and political processes of the Justice and Peace Law. 20. Another challenge lies in the implementation of mechanisms to guarantee security for the victims to participate and to receive reparations. This will have to be a central issue in 2008 if the Attorney General’s Office takes the steps that should follow the depositions of the paramilitary leaders.25 2. Extrajudicial executions 21. The persistence of extrajudicial executions attributed to members of the security forces, especially members of the Army, has prompted the Government to strengthen the control mechanisms. The political will of senior civilian and military personnel to adopt measures which will prevent, investigate, punish and expose situations in which this type of action has occurred has been most evident in their discussions with the Office during 2007; and they acknowledge that serious crimes, such as extrajudicial executions, do not even achieve any kind of military advantage. 22. New directives produced this year by senior Ministry of Defence officials and military authorities26 have emphasized technical and regulatory matters. These directives could serve as the practical basis for a comprehensive attempt to deal with allegations of extrajudicial executions attributed to the security forces. The office in Colombia will closely and regularly monitor implementation and results in 2008. All these measures follow the orientation of several recommendations made by this office, and it is expected that they will be fully developed in the document on integral policies of human rights and international humanitarian law to be published by the Ministry of Defence in early 2008. The Government has also asserted that the Military Criminal Justice has a restrictive area of action and should be limited to exceptional cases, as stated in the presidential objection to the bill containing a new Military Criminal 25 For example, there is an unresolved procedural debate about the correct moment to issue individual indictments - whether to use information already in hand for immediate prosecution, or to wait until all the evidence is in for all possible cases (including those yet unopened, based on hitherto unknown facts now coming to light). 26 For example, resolution 12 of 5 March 2007, “Rules for Engagement for the Military Forces”; Permanent Directive 10 of 6 June 2007 “Reiteration of the obligations on the part of the authorities to enforce the law and prevent the murder of protected persons”; Permanent Directive 19 of 2 November 2007, “Complement to Directive 10 of 2007 - Reiteration of the obligations on the part of the authorities to enforce the law and prevent the murder of protected persons”; Permanent Directive 300-28 of 20 November 2007, “Rules, analysis, diagnosis and measurement of the impact of operational results in the light of the policy of democratic security” (where priority is accorded to demobilization over arrests, and arrests have priority over deaths in combat).