5 16. In this regard, in addition to the systematization of the “Terror Files” (following the revelation of these documents on December 22, 1992), the State promulgated Act No. 838/96, on September 12, 1996, to compensate the victims of the human rights violations that occurred during the period 1954-1989, and adopted Act No. 2225, on October 6, 2003, creating the Truth and Justice Commission (para. 61(121) to 61(123)). A judgment of the First Criminal Tribunal (de Liquidación y Sentencia) of April 17, 2000, recognized the “common practice” at the time in question of “conceal[ing] the disappearances of detainees who were executed, an action that among the prisoners was called the ‘ley de fuga’ [the escape law]” (para. 69). And, significantly, a ruling of the Third Criminal Tribunal (de Liquidación y Sentencia) of December 7, 2000, stated that: “Terrorism organized by the State itself is a form of organized crime that has occurred in numerous countries and, in particular, in Latin America, where the police forces, diplomatic service, Government officials and military officials in Government have coordinated and carried out ‘cleansing tasks’ and ‘special death flights.’ This type of criminal organization has even crossed frontiers, with agents in border countries. […]” (para. 70). 17. In other words, in the instant case, the defendant State itself has acknowledged – in a commendable spirit of procedural cooperation – its international responsibility for the existence, at the time in question, of a criminal policy. And, it has done so, at different times, through statements made by all its powers. Its own Judiciary has expressly characterized State terrorism as a form of organized crime; in other words a State crime. The international jurists who continue to deny the existence of State crimes are closing their eyes to historically proven facts, disregarding the terrible suffering of the numerous victims of such crimes and providing a lamentable disservice to the evolution of contemporary international law. 18. State crimes do exist and are much more frequent that could be supposed prima facie. In the present Case of Goiburú et al., they were perpetrated on a transborder or inter-State scale. In a previous case heard by this Court, the Plan de Sánchez Massacre v. Guatemala (judgment on merits of April 29, 2004), I maintained in my separate opinion that: “From this perspective, State crime is a grave violation of peremptory international law (jus cogens). State crime becomes even more evident to the extent that it is established by the State’s intention (act or omission) or tolerance, acquiescence, negligence or omission in relation to grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law perpetrated by its agents, even in the name of a State policy” (para. 35). And, in my separate opinion in Myrna Mack Chang v. Guatemala (judgment of November 25, 2003), I indicated that, as subjects of international law, both the State and the individual can be held responsible for the crimes they commit, coexisting the international responsibility of both, with the corresponding legal consequences (para. 26). 19. In the instant case, State crimes have been committed on an inter-State level. The States of the Southern Cone coordinated within the framework of their “counterinsurgency” policy to torture and exterminate certain segments of their populations. What a tragic and historic irony! The State inflicted indescribable suffering – that will take decades to heal – precisely on their most valuable component, their population! As the Court concluded in this regard: