Argentina has requested the repatriation of a plane in Uruguay that was used to transport detainees during the Operation Condor plan of coordination between South American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, judicial sources said Tuesday.
The request was made in January by Judge Sebastián Casanello, who is investigating cases related to Operation Condor. Experts in 2023 determined that the Hawker Siddeley twin-jet aircraft was used by the Argentine Navy to transport five people who were kidnapped in Paraguay in 1977.
Argentina’s Foreign Ministry, which received the request, has informed the court that it has been forwarded on to Uruguay so that the corresponding steps could be taken, judicial sources told the AFP news agency.
The aircraft, which is currently located at Melilla International Airport on the outskirts of Montevideo, was allegedly used for the kidnapping of Argentine citizens José Luis Nell, Alejandro Logoluso and Marta Landi, and Uruguayan citizens Nelson Santana and Gustavo Inzaurralde.
According to documents from Paraguay's so-called ‘Terror Archive,’ which was made public in 1992, they were flown to Buenos Aires on May 19, 1977, via an Argentine Navy plane.
The plane was identified in 2022 by Uruguayan illustrator Sebastián Santana, who said that he located the plane while searching for graphic material online for an audiovisual project about the five leftist militants arrested in 1977 in Asunción by Paraguayan security forces.
The plane was identified in Melilla thanks to information from the Argentine Navy's Facebook page and blogs by aviation enthusiasts, which indicated that it was dedicated for the personal use of former admiral and Navy commander-in-chief Emilio Massera, who headed Argentina’s dictatorship from 1976 to 1978.
"The aircraft is in poor condition, although in one piece," Santana said in his report. "In 2013, part of the navigation panel was dismantled, but it is still a recognisable object.”
The aircraft, which first flew in July 1970, was sold by the Argentine Navy in 1987 and since then has been in civilian hands, initially with Argentine firms "for anti-hail operations" and later with Uruguayan company AirWolf "for air taxi services," according to the report.
After taking Santana's witness statement, Casanello asked Uruguay to preserve the aircraft and ordered the corresponding tests, which confirmed that it was the Hawker Siddeley HS-125 model 400B in question, carrying registration number 0653.
In the mid-1970s, the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone joined forces to persecute and eliminate left-wing dissidents across national borders as part of the secretive Operation Condor.
Hundreds of people were murdered under the US-backed programme of state terror involving Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
– TIMES/AFP
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