6 “[D]uring the 1970s, in absolute contradiction of the principal objects and purposes of the organization of the international community established universally in the Charter of the United Nations, and the regional community in the Charter of the Organization of American States and the American Convention itself, the intelligence services of several countries of the Southern Cone of the Americas established a criminal inter-State organization with a complex assemblage, the scope of which is still being revealed today; in other words, there was a systematic practice of “State terrorism” at an inter-State level” (para. 72). III. State crime revisited 20. The existence of a true State crime – an issue that I have referred to in some of my recent opinions in this Court – is, in my opinion, convincingly proved in the instant case and, furthermore, on an extensive scale by a truly inter-State network (or, to use a current expression, “transnational” or “multinational”). The secret services of the States of the Southern Cone of South America, trained by the United States of America in the grim “School of the Americas” in Panama (Canal Zone),13 coordinated to exterminate political opponents. The facts concerning “Operation Condor” as it was known – using, in the so-called “struggle against (communist) subversion, a systematic pattern of illegal detentions and abductions, torture and illtreatment, forced disappearances and murders, planned and executed through a State policy under the lamentable doctrine of “national security” – has gradually become known during the past decade, particularly with the discovery of the socalled “Terror Files” in Paraguay (although no equivalent files were kept in the other Southern Cone countries).14 Nevertheless, not everything that occurred in that subregion during the years of the military dictatorships is known today (cf. infra), not even everything that took place within “Operation Condor.” 21. It is precisely for this reason (since, as the Court itself has stated, the “scope” of “Operation Condor” “continues to be revealed today” (supra)), that it was an error not to convene a public hearing in this case, given the particular gravity and historic transcendence of the context in which the facts occurred. In its new zeal to “produce” judgments in a record time – against which I have constantly and in vain protested within the Court since this new “method” was adopted,”15 to cater to the “productivity” graphics in its reports, which appear to have been prepared by economists rather than jurists - the Inter-American Court failed to convene (in a hasty decision, as has been its custom recently), the public hearing that was necessary, despite the State’s acknowledgement of responsibility, which, in all probability, would have also cooperated procedurally during this hearing. 13 . Called by some the “school of assassins,” where it is estimated that more than 60,000 Latin American officers were “trained” (over the period 1946-1984) in torture techniques, particularly to extract confessions from political prisoners; M. Almada, “Terrorismo Made in USA en las Américas - Las Estrategias Legales contra la Impunidad en Paraguay” (presentation in Bochum/Germany on October 14, 2005), in www.terrorfileonline.org/es, p. 6. and cf. A. Boccia Paz, M.H. López, A.V. Pecci and M.G. Giménez, op. cit. infra no. (49), pp. 78-79; J. Patrice McSherry, op. cit. infra no. (51), pp. 16-17. 14 . Cf., e.g., E. Cuya, “La ‘Operación Cóndor': El Terrorismo de Estado de Alcance Transnacional”, 7 Revista Ko'aga Roñe'eta (1996) pp. 1-9; K.M. Slack, “Operation Condor and Human Rights: A Report from Paraguay's Archive of Terror”, 18 Human Rights Quarterly (1996) pp. 492-506. 15 . Not by consensus, but by the decision of a majority of the judges.