15 51. Indeed, “Operation Condor” (formally created in November 1975, but with some previous activities in 1973-1974, and which, in 1976, achieved its highest level of repression, and in 1980 entered into decline), was planned by the “intelligence services” of the countries of the Southern Cone,50 to implement a State extermination policy, characterized by the concealment of transborder “counterinsurgency” operations by death squadrons (illegal and arbitrary detentions, abductions, torture, murders or extrajudicial executions, and the forced disappearance of persons). The participating States endowed it with a para-State structure – to further a State criminal policy – which enabled those who held power to hide the atrocities and avoid the application of international law and human rights guarantees, with total irresponsibility and impunity.51 52. The reports and testimony of survivors – only recently published – of the atrocities committed in the countries of “Operation Condor” are terrifying; in addition to the above-mentioned crimes, the most macabre forms of torture were perpetrated, together with collective executions, the kidnapping of babies and young children and alteration of their identities, confinement in clandestine prisons (and clandestine cemeteries), the use of fierce dogs against detainees in infrahuman conditions, and micro-fractures caused by the wheels of vehicles passing over the hands and feet of detainees52 - forming a Dantesque picture of horrifying torments. The concern to conceal the crimes was permanent: “During the war to exterminate those who were opposed to the dictatorship, the military tried to hide the corpses, the evidence of their crimes. Almost two thousand political prisoners were thrown into the sea alive, from cargo aircraft. Thousands of others were buried in clandestine cemeteries.”53 53. The macabre “death flights” were carried out on a weekly basis, taking 15 to 20 prisoners each time, who were told that they were being transferred to “ordinary prisons,” and who, “believing that they would be released from the torment of torture, boarded the [Argentine Navy] cargo aircraft with relief”; because: “the executioners had the problem of where to hide the thousands of dead, since the clandestine cemeteries were full. The solution was to throw the condemned men into the sea so that they would be eaten by sharks.”54 50 . Also, the involvement of the United States “intelligence service” in this Operation has today been proved, with the declassification of some (although not all) of the United States’ documents on Condor in June 1999; Condor as a component of a broader United States “counterinsurgency” strategy to prevent social movements in favor of political, economic and social change in the region; J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States..., op. cit. infra n. (51), pp. XVIII-XIX, 241, 249-250 and 252-253; and cf. J. Dinges, Operación Cóndor..., op. cit. supra n. (16), p. 22. The FBI was well aware of everything that was happening in the mid1970s in the countries of the Southern Cone, as indicated in paragraph 61(8) of this judgment of the InterAmerican Court. 51 . J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States - “Operation Condor” and Covert War in Latin America, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publs., 2005, pp. 4-5, 7-11, 21-23 and 242-243. 52 . N.C. Mariano, Operación Cóndor - Terrorismo de Estado en el Cono Sur, Buenos Aires, Ed. Lohlé Lumen, 1998, pp. 73, 87, 62 and 95. 53 . N.C. Mariano, op. cit. supra n. (52), p. 45. 54 . Ibid., pp. 30-31.