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(NRC/RNW) – Spanish police have arrested a pilot for the Dutch airline Transavia on suspicion of carrying out ‘death flights‘ in Argentina under the military dictatorship between 1976 to 1983.
The arrest took place on the runway of the Valencia airport Manises on Tuesday, according to Spanish newspaper El País.
The man was arrested in the cockpit just before departure to Amsterdam, planned for 2.30 p.m., upon a request from the justice authorities in Argentina. The pilot, identified as Julio Alberto Poch, holds both Dutch and Argentinian citizenship.
Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada
He is wanted for questioning in four probes of more than 1,000 deaths during his time as a pilot at the Navy Mechanics School, a notorious torture center in Buenos Aires, Spanish police said. The Argentinean junta under Jorge Videla got rid of opponents by throwing them from airplanes and helicopters into the Atlantic Sea and Argentine rivers, hence named vuelos de la muerte.
The flight was to be the pilot’s last before he was set to retire.
AMSTERDAM, Sept 23 (Reuters) – Spanish authorities have arrested a pilot for Dutch airline Transavia on charges he flew “death flights” for Argentina’s former military rulers, a Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Spanish authorities were not immediately available to comment.
An Argentine government report says more than 11,000 people died or disappeared during the so-called “Dirty War,” a crackdown on leftists and other opponents of the military regime that ruled the South American country from 1976 to 1983.
Rights groups claim the number is closer to 30,000.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
