32 61(10) Regarding the steps taken to detain an alleged “subversive element,” the Head of the Investigations Department, Pastor Milciades Coronel, stated that there were three options: (1) applying the law; (2) physical disappearance, and (3) “la alternativa aplicada” [applying the third alternative]. 61(11) In the mid-1970s, an extremely brutal repressive process was initiated that lasted three years. Subsequently, in April 1976, the police revealed the existence of an alleged clandestine subversive political and military movement known as the “Military Political Organization” (OPM), operating in Asunción and other parts of the country. As of that time, “the most extensive anti-subversive police operation ever documented was unleashed.” Within a few months, thousands of people were deprived of their liberty to “investigate” their links to OPM. 61(12) Regarding the disappearances that took place under “Operation Condor,” the police and armed forces of the Southern Cone, united in their “anti-communist crusade,” detained citizens of other countries without putting them on trial, subjected them to physical coercion, allowed them be interrogated by police from their own country, and transferred them clandestinely to prisons in their countries of origin or directly “disappeared” them. More than 50 Paraguayans disappeared after being imprisoned in Argentina. 61(13) In the 1970s and 1980s, several methods of disappearance were used in Paraguay: (a) (b) (c) The victims were detained by individuals in civilian clothing and never seen again; Individuals were arrested openly; then they were removed from the prisons and penitentiaries and disappeared completely from all the official records of the authorities who had made the arrests. Requests for information about their whereabouts were characterized by silence, surprise or the official denial that the victims had ever been detained; and Paraguayan citizens disappeared in Argentina during the military dictatorship in that country. In some cases, these were Paraguayans in exile in Argentina. In others, the Paraguayan victims had been expelled from their country by the Paraguayan authorities and then disappeared while they were in Argentina. 61(14) The forced disappearances of Agustín Goiburú Giménez, Carlos José Mancuello Bareiro, and the brothers Rodolfo and Benjamín Ramírez Villalba have similar characteristics and refer to a single context, in which agents of the Paraguayan State illegally detained, maintained incommunicado, tortured and disappeared individuals whose political activities were opposed to General Stroessner’s regime or who were identified as his enemies.