2023-06-20 14:13:33
Her justice Argentinian asked the Uruguayan authorities to preserve in its current state an aircraft that was located on its territory and may have been used for secret transfers of prisoners in the context of Operation Condor.
The specific code name was the cooperation between the military juntas of Latin America to eliminate their opponents.
The jet, a twin-engine Hawker Siddeley HS-125, is at Melilla International Airport on the outskirts of the capital Montevideo, according to a request for international judicial assistance signed June 15 by Argentine federal judge Sebastian Casanejo.
This judge, who has investigated crimes linked to Operación Cóndor, asked the Uruguayan authorities to take measures to “maintain” the aircraft, so that it “remains in its current state.”
The small plane was discovered in September by a 46-year-old Uruguayan, Sebastian Santana, as he was doing research to make a film about the disappearance of five left-wing activists in Argentina and Uruguay who were arrested in 1977 in Paraguay and disappeared.
According to records recovered in Paraguay in 1992, the five prisoners – their fate is still unknown – had been flown to Buenos Aires on an Argentine Navy aircraft.
Mr Santana revealed that he found the plane, in bad shape but still in one piece, thanks to the Argentine Air Force’s Facebook account and blogs from people who are passionate about aviation. According to his information, the jet had been used for personal purposes by Admiral Emilio Masera, a form of military dictatorship in Argentina, between 1976 and 1978, and ended its service as an air taxi in Uruguay.
Francesca Lesa, a researcher at the University of Oxford (Britain), specializing in Operation Condor, expressed satisfaction at the discovery of the aircraft.
“The plane is a material trace of the crimes that were committed, and its detection in Uruguay may contribute to the ongoing investigations in Argentina, which is still trying to determine what was the fate of the victims,” he said.
This operation was a coordinated plan by the military dictatorships of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s to exterminate leftist people who fought against their regimes. The US, aware of this operation, had no objection.
Source: APE-MPE, AFP
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