2 subsequently sought to object to said acts in the Mapiripán Massacre being attributed to the State itself. The Court noted that "while the acts that took place between July 15 and 20,1997, in Mapiripán, were committed by members of paramilitary groups, the massacre could not have been prepared and carried out without the collaboration, acquiescence, and tolerance, expressed through several actions and omissions, of the Armed Forces of the State, including high officials of the latter” (para. 121). 9. Then, analyzing the facts acknowledged by the respondent State in the cas d'espèce, the Court stated that "it clearly follows that both the behavior of its own agents and that of the members of the paramilitary groups are attributable to the State insofar as they in fact acted in a situation and in areas that were under the control of the State. In point of fact, the incursion by the paramilitary in Mapiripán was an act planned several months before July 1997, carried out with full knowledge, logistic preparations and collaboration by the Armed Forces, who enabled the paramilitary to leave Apartadó and Neclocí toward Mapiripán in areas that were under its control, and left the civilian population defenseless during the days of the massacre by the unjustified transfer of the troops to other places” (para. 121). 10. A State is found to be internationally responsible by means of a judicious mental operation by the members of a competent international judicial body, after carefully establishing the facts of the concrete case; it is not merely the mechanical application of given formulations of precepts that, in any case, are suppletory in nature.2 Regarding the subject matter under examination, I wish to refer here to a reflection that guided the past work of the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) on attributing a conduct to the State with the purpose of establishing its international responsibility. 11. In his substantive fourth (1972) Report on “The Internationally Unlawful Act of the State, a Source of International Responsibility”, the former rapporteur of the ILC on this subject, Roberto Ago3, judiciously reflected that "It would be useless to object, as writers have often done, that only States are subjects of international law and that therefore only they can violate the obligations imposed by that law. Apart from the fact that such an objection would be begging the question, the cases referred to here are not cases of so-called international responsibility of individuals, but cases of international responsibility of the State. Since the action of the private individual would be attributed to the . No matter how pertinent it may be to consider, with the aim of attributing said responsibility, the provisions set forth in Articles 8 and 9, and partly in Article 11, of the 2001 ILC Articles on the International Responsibility of the States –even more so in face of the acknowledgment of international responsibility made by the State regarding “the acts that took place in Mapiripán in July 1997.” 2 . In addition to Roberto Ago (rapporteur on this topic for the ILC from 1963 to 1979) we should mention other distinguished jurists who also acted as rapporteurs on this matter at the ILC, both the previous one, F.V. García Amador (1955-1961), and subsequent ones (W. Riphagen, 1979-1986), G. Arangio-Ruiz (1987-1996) and J. Crawford (1997-2001). 3