ARGENTINIANS have heard shocking testimony of how more than 4,000 victims of the military junta that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983 were thrown into the sea alive by leading army figures.

Former colonel Nelson Ramon Gonzalez told a court hearing it was “common knowledge” that thousands of those who resisted the dictatorship passed through the notorious Campo de Mayo military base, which acted as a clandestine detention centre.

Many of them were taken onto planes and then dropped into the ocean.

“About 4,000 people passed through [Campo de Mayo] and then were thrown into the sea alive,” said Gonzalez. “It was known throughout Campo de Mayo. There were the Fiat planes and the flights left there. It was common knowledge,” he said.

Mr Gonzalez was giving evidence via video link last week in a “mega-trial” looking into the deaths of 323 people killed at four bases in the Campo de Mayo in the so-called “dirty war.”

He was one of eight officers posted to the base under the close supervision of Argentinian intelligence agencies including the 601 intelligence battalion.

The US handed over its fourth and final instalment of the declassification process in April which included a 50,000 page file on the human rights abuses conducted during Operation Condor — a Washington-backed campaign of political repression and state terror which led to an estimated 30,000 deaths in Argentina.

Pablo Llonto, a lawyer for some of the victims, said Mr Gonzalez’s testimony was “very important” for the case as it “contributes to understanding the central nerve of repression throughout Argentina.”

It will “remove all the bad stories about the counter-offensive and start thinking of the movement in a much broader sense in relation to resistance to the dictatorship … This giant web of disinformation that covered the country for so long is beginning to be discovered,” he said.

Eleven judicial cases have brought together after the authorities unified several investigations.

The trial is also hearing evidence regarding the disappearance or detentions of 14 trade unionists at the Mercedes Benz factory at the hands of the military junta.

“We come for justice because we have the obligation to ensure that justice is served for younger workers so they do not have to experience economic power this same way,” said former factory worker Julio D’Alessandro.

In December last year two former Ford directors were handed jail sentences for collaborating with the military dictatorship in the detentions of 24 union workers.