Latest news with #MiriamLewin
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Plane Used To Drop Argentine Political Prisoners To Their Deaths Found In Florida
Florida has it all: sprawling retirement communities, womanizing police impersonators and planes used to commit acts of unspeakable horror. A Skyvan PA-51 used by Argentina's military dictatorship to throw alleged dissidents to their deaths in the South Atlantic Ocean was found in Florida in 2008. The discovery shed light on how the regime terrorized its own population in the 1970s and eventually led to the aircraft's return to Buenos Aires in 2023. The Skyan's location was uncovered by Argentine journalist Miriam Lewin and Italian photographer Giancarlo Ceraudo. The duo recently shared their story with CBS's "60 Minutes." Lewin was a student activist during the 1970s. The military kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused her during the Dirty War, the term used by the regime. Lewin was lucky to survive her imprisonment in the basement of the Navy School of Mechanics (or ESMA), as it's estimated that the government killed up to 30,000 people. Read more: Here's Why You Always Board Planes On The Left During the Dirty War, ESMA was a secret death camp in the middle of Buenos Aires. The school's sadistic officers explored various cruel methods of executing its captives before settling on its death flights. Prisoners were told that they were being vaccinated but were actually sedated. The military then loaded the still-conscious captives onto a Skyvan plane for a one-way trip. They were tossed out of the back at 10,000 feet over the ocean to their certain death. For comparison, the Golden Gate Bridge's road deck is 220 feet over the water. Lewin said: "Death flights allowed them to disappeared the bodies of the disappeared. No trail, no clues whatsoever that could incriminate them." The Argentine military bought five British-built Skyvan PA-51s in the 1970s. The twin-turboprop plane was commonly used for transporting troops and cargo because its large rear door. Coincidentally, two of the planes were shot down by the British military during the Falklands War, the 1982 conflict that helped precipitate the regime's collapse the following year. The three surviving Skyvans were sold off. In 2008, Lewin and Ceraudo discovered that a skydiving company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida had one of the planes. The new owners were completely unaware of the aircraft's dark past but happily handed over the Skyvan's logs. With that information, the duo found the first concrete evidence that the death flights took place. The plane was connected to a death flight where the bodies were actually recovered. A storm washed six bodies ashore over 200 miles away from the Argentine capital and buried in unmarked graves just days after the flight. The bodies were finally exhumed and identified in 2005. Five of the victims were from a group of mothers and nuns kidnapped from Holy Cross Church in Buenos Aires. The regime condemned these innocent people for protesting to learn the whereabouts of their own disappeared children. This movement ultimately led to the dictatorship's demise. The recovered logs also revealed the identity of the death flight's pilots. They were still living average lives in Argentina. Two of them were commercial pilots for flag carrier Aerolíneas Argentinas. However, the country took action to confront its past and punish those who tormented the populace. In 2017, all the pilots of all death flights were sentenced to life in prison after 48 people tied to ESMA were tried for crimes against humanity. The reporting of Lewin and Ceraudo played a crucial role during the trial. The Fort Lauderdale Skyvan PA-51 was returned to Argentina in June 2023. It is now on display at ESMA, now a museum dedicated to the disappeared during the Dirty War. The vehicles often preserved for their historical significance are successful racing machines or were previously owned by famous people. Cars tied to tragic events are often left to rot or destroyed. For example, the 1966 Lincoln Continental used by Martin Luther King Jr. during his final trip to Memphis, where he was assassinated, ended up in a vacant lot behind an auto shop until 2001. History should be remembered not only to celebrate the successes but also to learn from the horrors. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
CBS News
03-03-2025
- CBS News
Human rights organizations face mass layoffs in Argentina
On the grounds of a former naval academy in a Buenos Aires neighborhood, a pearl gray Skyvan PA-51 sits parked on a concrete walkway. It appears to be an ordinary plane. But between 1976 and 1983, it was used as an instrument of murder by Argentina's military dictatorship. Up to 30,000 people are believed to have been "disappeared," or murdered. Anyone deemed to be an enemy of the state could be ordered aboard the Skyvan to take a "death flight:" to be flown out over the Atlantic ocean and pushed out at 10,000 feet. For decades, the planes used to commit these murders were thought to still exist, but had never been found. But an Argentine journalist, Miriam Lewin, tracked an aircraft down and decoded its flight logs, revealing its round trips out to the middle of the ocean. Lewin used the logs to learn the fate of 12 women, including two French nuns, who had been "disappeared" by the state in December 1977. She discovered they had been killed on one of these death flights. In a 60 Minutes interview, correspondent Jon Wertheim asked Lewin why the military would resort to such a cruel method of murder. "Death flights allowed them to disappear the bodies of the disappeared," Lewin said. "No trail, no clues whatsoever that could incriminate them." Argentina's military regime adopted another inhumane practice during this period: babies of pregnant mothers held in captivity were given to military families that wanted to adopt. 60 Minutes spoke with Guillermo Pérez Roisinblit, who was separated at birth from his biological mother Patricia while she was detained, and then raised by a family with connections to the military. Wertheim asked Roisinblit how it felt to learn that the family who had raised him for 20 years, had abducted him and were not his biological parents. "It's a very, very confusing time… it's like all the ties that you have at that moment are cut and you're absolutely alone," he said. The former naval academy in Buenos Aires, La Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, or ESMA, was used as a detention and torture facility during the military dictatorship. Lewin herself was once held prisoner there. Through a reconciliation process known as Truth, Memory and Justice, ESMA was transformed into a museum and became a home for human rights organizations and government agencies who document and educate the public about the dictatorship's crimes. In September 2023, ESMA was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The National Archive of Remembrance, where primary source documents related to the dictatorship are catalogued and used as a valuable resource for criminal prosecutions, is located at ESMA. ESMA is also a base for Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, human rights organizations led by the mothers and grandmothers of those who had been disappeared by the dictatorship. Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo uses DNA testing to identify stolen or missing children from the dictatorship era. They say they've found 139 children so far, and estimate hundreds more are waiting to be found. The president of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo is Estela de Carlotto. After decades of searching, she found her grandson. Her daughter Laura gave birth to him in captivity and was later killed. Carlotto told Wertheim in an interview, just before the current president Javier Milei took office, that government subsidies, that they have received for decades, are critical for their operations. But President Milei campaigned on sweeping promises of austerity and budget cuts to right the Argentine economy. Starting this past December, human rights workers in government agencies, museums, research and investigative organizations have been laid off. According to a union representative for state employees, roughly half of the workers in the Human Rights Secretariat have been laid off or fired. At the National Archive for Remembrance, half of the investigative staff has been laid off. One employee remains in document conservation, and two people are left in digitization. State agencies, including the Central Registry for Victims of State Terrorism and the National Identity Commission (CONADI), that help investigate the dictatorship's crimes, and even the ESMA museum itself have also seen staff cuts. An entire facility with staff that promotes human rights through the visual arts, the Haroldo Conti Cultural Center, has been shuttered indefinitely for "restructuring," according to the National Human Rights Secretariat Alberto Baños. In January, thousands of protestors rallied at ESMA to protest the layoffs and the closing of the cultural center. One of those protestors was Miriam Lewin. "We organized lots of activities to support the ex-ESMA, to support the cultural center, to support the archives, to support the workers that were fired," she told 60 Minutes Overtime. "We had this huge rally, with lots of young people, with the participation of musicians, dancers, writers, poets, and lots of human rights activists, lots of students, lots of survivors. [And] we had, of course, the Grandmothers and the Mothers for Plaza de Mayo." Lewin was at the protest that night when candles were lit. She looked around to see crowds surrounding the Skyvan used for the "death flights." "And it's [there] and can be seen as a symbol and a proof of state terrorism… so it was very, very moving," she told 60 Minutes Overtime. The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have not received any subsidies from the Milei government, and their questions about the status of the funds remain unanswered. In early January, Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona wrote on X that he had cut off all government funding to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, calling them a "con." 60 Minutes Overtime reached out to Minister Libarona to ask about the status of these subsidies, but did not receive a response. 60 Minutes Overtime also reached out to Human Rights Secretariat Alberto Baños. He too did not answer questions about the layoffs. "If I could talk to President Milei and Vice President Villarruel, I would ask them to stop this policy of destruction," Lewin told Overtime. "We have grandmothers looking for their grandchildren." "I would ask them for empathy… 'please, have some empathy.'" Will Croxton Will Croxton is a digital producer at 60 Minutes.
