Latest news with #SkyvanPA-51
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.
CBS News
03-03-2025
- CBS News
How a small plane, once used by Argentine military to throw citizens to their death, was later found in U.S.
Every once in a while we come across a story so extraordinary that it resists belief. Tonight, the saga of an airplane that doubled as an instrument of murder. During Argentina's ruthless dictatorship in the mid 70s, the Skyvan PA-51 was used to throw victims alive into the Atlantic ocean, to quote unquote "disappear" thousands of innocent citizens seen as a threat to the state. Those disappeared were meant never to reappear. Forty years after the end of the dictatorship, many of its crimes remain unsolved and unresolved. When an unlikely pair of investigators went looking for the death plane, their search for truth uncovered state secrets, damning evidence and a reminder of a dark period that echoes into the present. It was, quite literally, a vehicle for evil. This British-made Skyvan, now 50 years old, is grounded for good here at the former Navy School of Mechanics, or ESMA, in a Buenos Aires neighborhood. The facility is now a museum and a memorial to the 30,000 citizens tortured and murdered during the dictatorship. This was a death camp looming large in the middle of a thrumming city. Images of the victims adorn the walls—most were students, dissidents, and union members, never charged with a crime. This plane, where many of them met their death, would have been lost in the contrails of history, had it not been for an Italian documentary photographer, Giancarlo Ceraudo. Jon Wertheim: Why was it important, not just to return this plane to Argentina, but here to ESMA? Giancarlo Ceraudo: It's very important for the memory for-- for the next generation. This is real. This is an evidence. This was an instrument of death but now is a witness. The cockpit, just as it was when the military pilots flew their clandestine death missions — flying far enough over the Atlantic so the bodies wouldn't likely be recovered, and then dumping the victims out alive. To climb inside the plane is to experience an unmistakable chill of the past. Giancarlo grew up loving planes, but this flying coffin ended that romance. Jon Wertheim: You're emotional seeing this. Giancarlo Ceraudo: Si, very emotional, very emotional. How did a young Italian photographer—armed only with a camera, an eye for detail and burning curiosity—come to unravel one of the great national shames of Argentina? It all began in 2003, when Ceraudo was in Buenos Aires working on a project about the disappeared. He heard about the death flights in the 1970s, but the stories were never fully told. So many unanswered questions. And so little accountability. If there were flights, he reasoned, then surely there were planes and there were pilots. So where were they? Jon Wertheim: You knew those death flights existed. How did you start your search for the planes? Giancarlo Ceraudo: I had an idea but-- to start the investigation-- started with Miriam. Miriam is Miriam Lewin. She was a young student activist in 1977 when she was kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused. She was then taken to ESMA and was among the few who survived, though she never knew quite why. Later, she became a leading investigative journalist in Argentina, best known for unearthing the crimes of the dictatorship. When Ceraudo first contacted Miriam she told him she had other things on her mind. Miriam Lewin: And I said, "Look, we were looking for the Desaparecidos, the missing people. And then we started looking for the bodies. So we have plenty to think about." Jon Wertheim: People, not things. Miriam Lewin: Yeah. And he said, "I come from a different culture. In Rome, when they are digging a tunnel to extend the subway lines, they find a plate or a sculpture and they stop everything for, like, three years," right? Jon Wertheim: He comes from a culture where objects are-- are witnesses to history, and that hadn't occurred to anyone here? Miriam Lewin: Yeah. Giancarlo's passion paired with Miriam's reporting chops, and her own experience at ESMA. She'd seen other prisoners taken to the basement, and given what they were told was a vaccine. Only years later did she learn that it was a sedative, and that those drugged prisoners were put on board planes, flown over the ocean, stripped of their clothes before being flung to their deaths. Jon Wertheim: Dumping prisoners out of an airplane 10,000 feet above an ocean seems so extreme. Why would a military resort to this? Miriam Lewin: Death flights allowed them to disappeared the bodies of the disappeared. No trail, no clues whatsoever that could incriminate them. Miriam and Giancarlo began their search, poring over military records, hunting down sources and combing the Internet. They discovered that in the 1970s, the Argentine military purchased five Skyvans, workhorses used for transporting cargo, troops and… Skyvan Commercial: Leading parachutists of many nations have dropped from Skyvan, and they are unanimous that there's not another jump platform like it. Two of the fleet were shot down by the British during the Falklands War. Argentina's surrender in that conflict ended the dictatorship in 1983. The rest were sold off. They tracked one plane to the United States, where it was being used for skydiving excursions. Miriam Lewin: Maybe the owners didn't know about the terrible, obscure-- past of these planes. In 2008, Miriam and Giancarlo found the plane in Fort Lauderdale and later paid it a visit. To their surprise, the owner provided them with all the technical logs, detailing every journey the plane had ever flown. Miriam Lewin: I was very, very excited. I-- I couldn't believe that. I couldn't believe it. They brought the logs back to Argentina and asked for help deciphering the technicalities, but even decades after the dictatorship ended, there was still lingering paranoia. Aviation experts didn't want to talk. Miriam Lewin: What they said, "No, no. No way. They could kill me." But they were nothing if not persistent. They tracked down a source who explained the highly suspicious journeys occurring Wednesday nights tracing a route over the middle of the ocean — the departure and arrival points the same. Miriam Lewin: When he looks at them and goes, "Oh gosh. This is gold." Jon Wertheim: Why did he say that? Miriam Lewin: This is the first time that death flights could be documented and proven. Finding the logs was one thing, but Miriam and Giancarlo were determined to solve one of the most notorious and heinous abductions of the dictatorship. Every week, the mothers of the disappeared marched in the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Presidential Palace, demanding to know the fate of their missing sons and daughters. The mothers became the most potent symbol of resistance against the dictatorship, and soon they became targets themselves. In December 1977, a group of 12 mothers and their supporters, including two French nuns, were meeting here at the Holy Cross Church in Buenos Aires when they were hauled away and taken to ESMA. They were seen by fellow prisoners being tortured, and then never seen again. Azucena Villaflor was one of the mothers. She had been searching in vain for her son who had disappeared. Cecilia de Vincenti is her daughter. Jon Wertheim: As the days turned into months, turned into years, what did you think had happened? Cecilia de Vincenti (in Spanish/English Translation): In reality, we didn't know what happened. Every single day we thought she was coming back: New Year's, Mother's Day. Every day we lived like this. What Cecilia and the other victims' families didn't know: in the days after those kidnapped were last seen, a rare storm washed up six bodies some 220 miles from Buenos Aires. Authorities in the nearby town secretly buried the remains in unmarked graves and a local doctor issued death certificates, noting the bodies had suffered multiple blunt force traumas. Jon Wertheim: What did that mean? Miriam Lewin: This means that they were compatible with-- those bodies-- having fallen from height. In the years after democracy was restored, forensic anthropologists began unearthing evidence of the dictatorship's crimes. In 2005, bodies in the cemetery were exhumed, and identified. Five were victims of the Holy Cross kidnapping. Azucena Villafor was one of them. Jon Wertheim: The ultimate purpose of these death flights was to-- to disappear the victims-- and sink to the bottom of the ocean. Your-- your mother did not disappear, did she? Cecilia de Vincenti (in Spanish/English Translation): The mothers and the nuns fought death just as they fought when they were looking for their children. The ocean brought them back as proof that the military was trying to disappear them. Miriam and Giancarlo began building a timeline for the days after the 12 were kidnapped from the Holy Cross church. And there it was in the logs: a three-hour flight over the Atlantic the night of Dec. 14, 1977. What's more, the log contained the names of the pilots. Giancarlo Ceraudo: I think this plane is a gift, yes. From the sky. For Miriam, the hard-boiled investigative journalist, this was the jackpot. Miriam Lewin: I thought that no one-- would deny what happened back then. Seeing that proof, seeing that horrible proof of a group of women being thrown alive into the ocean, being mothers and nuns, right? Innocent people, completely innocent people. The pilots of those death flights? They were hiding in plain sight. It was a glimpse into the banality of evil. Two of them were flying international commercial routes for Argentina's state airline. Miriam and Giancarlo's investigation figured prominently in the largest and perhaps most sensational trial in the country's history. In 2017—decades after the fact—an Argentine court convicted 48 people linked to ESMA for crimes against humanity. The pilots who flew the Skyvan PA-51 death flights, were sentenced to life in prison. For Miriam and Giancarlo there was one last assignment: bringing the Skyvan back from the United States to Argentina, where it would be a source of truth, irrefutable evidence of the horrors of the past. Miriam Lewin: Questioning, denying, or even vindicating what happened in those years will lead us into darkness again. We always said, "never again." So it was, on a misty morning in June 2023, the Skyvan PA-51 arrived at its final destination. Giancarlo was there taking the last pictures of this personal odyssey, this 20-year investigation. The families and friends of the victims were there as well. Miriam Lewin: You have to consider that I could have been a passenger of one of those flights. So-- I always ask myself-- why I survived? Miriam Lewin: Yes. Now I know definitely that there was a goal. There was a purpose of my survival. To get justice. Produced by Michael H. Gavshon. Field producer, Dawn Makinson. Associate producers, Nadim Roberts and Elizabeth Germino. Broadcast associates: Mimi Lamarre and Jane Greeley. Edited by Daniel J. Glucksman.
