An Argentine-born pilot for a low-cost airline was arrested during a stopover in a Spanish airport on suspicion of piloting planes that carried hundreds of dissidents to their deaths during his country’s 1976 to 1983 “dirty war,” authorities said on Wednesday.
Julio Alberto Poch, 57, a former Argentine navy lieutenant with Dutch nationality, is wanted in his native country on suspicion of piloting “death flights,” during which drugged prisoners were thrown from airplanes and helicopters into the Atlantic Sea and Argentine rivers, Dutch foreign ministry spokesman Herbert Brinkman said.
Poch is wanted for questioning in four investigations 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.
Spanish police said Poch was arrested on Tuesday night after touching down at Valencia airport on a flight from the Netherlands.
Police said they detained him during a 40-minute stopover before he was due to fly back to Amsterdam.
The Dutch foreign ministry confirmed Poch was a pilot with Transavia, an airline that flies mainly tourist routes between the Netherlands and other European and North African cities.
They added that a replacement pilot had been arranged so that the flight could continue on its way after the arrest.
The Argentine government estimates about 13,000 people died in the crackdown on dissent during the country’s period of military rule between 1976 and 1983. Human rights groups say the toll is closer to 30,000.
The Dutch National Prosecutor’s office said in a statement that investigators searched Poch’s home on Tuesday and seized documents.
“In Argentina and the Netherlands investigations are under way into the former marine pilot. These investigations were prompted by information received by [Dutch] national investigators,” the prosecutor’s office said.
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