57 Years later, Executive Decree Law No. 238/60, reforming Chapter III of the special part of the Penal Code, which entered into force with some modifications introduced by Parliament, greatly increased the penalties for offenses against the State’s internal security: rebellion, sedition, mutiny and riot; establishing prison sentences for these offenses. Thus, the “enemy” was no longer a subversive or a communist, but any political opponent of the Stroessner democracy. Finally, in 1970, Act No. 290/70 on the “Defense of public peace and individual liberty” was enacted, legislating, above all, against offenses without victims, involving objective legal status (personalidad objetiva), dangerousness, or lifestyle, and other assumptions that, in particular, affected the stability of the hierarchic structure of the State and its institutions. These laws form part of the package of penal laws that governed the conduct of the Paraguayans during the 35-year military regime. The State’s penal policies determined the differences between: criminal / anti-social / subversive / communist, and this extended also to the criminalization of public liberties, such as freedom of expression, of association, of petition, to strike, of movement, and others, censuring freedom of the press and decriminalizing certain executive activities of governmental agencies that operated with privileged justifications.” (“Política de la verdad,” José Ignacio González Macchi, in “Casas de la Violencia,” p. 38, Asunción, Paraguay, 1996). The opinions described up to this point do not let this court forget the irrefutable reality of the era of the dictatorial regimes in Latin America, which caused great hardship in our country. A notorious disregard by the public authorities of non-derogable rights inherent to the human being, through abductions, torture, disappearances and executions, violating to excess an endless number of fundamental human rights that were the subject of international efforts designed to ensure their recognition and defense at the time. In this regard, in the instant case, it is obvious that the freedom of movement, thought and expression of those who sympathized with different political ideologies from those of the people in power was violated completely. The principles behind these ideologies allegedly threatened the system of representative democratic government based on the rule of law embodied – although only formally – in the Constitutions of 1870 and 1967. While, despite this, the dictatorship operated with harassment, aggression and illegal detentions, and other crimes, dishonoring and trampling on the dignity of the principles promulgated in the “UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS” and the “AMERICAN DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF MAN.” […] The common plan of action, in this specific case, consisted in finding out, investigating or obtaining as much information as possible on the “subversive” operations and activities of the members of the Popular Revolutionary Army [ERP]. In this regard, tacitly or expressly, the corresponding police officials were authorized to search homes, detain and interrogate suspects and, when necessary, torture them until they extracted a “confession,” and even to eliminate those “subversive elements who would not capitulate.” Specifically, with regard to CARLOS JOSÉ MANCUELLO BAREIRO, who allegedly, together with AMILCAR OVIEDO and the brothers RODOLFO and BENJAMIN RAMIREZ VILLALBA, was directly responsible for making an attempt on the life of the President of the Republic, members of the Cabinet and Congress, with the support of ERP through contacts made in the city of La Plata, Argentina, with Dr. Agustín Goiburú, seeking to end the Government in power at the time and take control of the country. The plan consisted in locating, detaining, interrogating, and torturing him, if necessary, and trying to subjugate him.53 53 Cf. judgment of April 17, 2000, delivered by the No. 1 Criminal Tribunal (de Liquidación and Sentencia) (file of attachments to the application, attachment 2(1), tome I, folios 112, 113 and 119).