The Criminal Court specialized in Organized Crime approved the request made by the Argentine justice system to repatriate the aircraft that is no longer flying.
Uruguay will return to Argentina the plane used to exchange prisoners between both countries during the last dictatorship military, within the framework of Condor Plan, after he Criminal Court specialized in Organized Crime approve the repatriation request issued by the Justice of the neighboring country.
In 2023, after a presentation by the lawyers Rodolfo Yanzón and Flavia Fernández Brozzi, the Argentine judge Sebastian Casanello requested to Uruguay the repatriation of Hawker Siddeley HS-125 model 400 B which, during his years of service in the Navy of the neighboring country, was identified with the registration number 0653 and was used for the exchange of prisoners between the dictatorships of the Southern Cone. “The recovery of this aircraft, used to commit crimes against humanity, will contribute to the reconstruction of the facts and the investigation of the truth as well as to the implementation of material criminal law,” the magistrate argued.
In this regard, the Criminal Court specialized in Organized Crime approved said request on April 30, as reported by the Argentine media Página/12, and the Argentine Foreign Ministry has already communicated the resolution to Judge Casanello.
The Hawker was sold a few years after the Falklands War (1982) to an Argentine company and, later, to other Uruguayan companies. Currently, its owner is AirWolf SRL but, since 2008, the aircraft has been abandoned in the Melilla Airport. Recently, the justice system of the neighboring country became aware of the state of the plane.
For Judge Casanello, the aircraft has two characteristics: it is evidence and it was the instrument used to commit a crime. Arguments that the Uruguayan justice system shared and for which it approved the repatriation request. Now, the next step will be to define how the Hawker will be moved from Montevideo to Buenos Aires, since there is a fundamental logistical difficulty: the plane no longer flies.
Source: Ambito
