Venezuelan Boeing 747-300, belonging to Venezuelan state cargo airline EMTRASUR. Photo: File photo.
The secretary general of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Juan Carlos Salazar Gómez, has announced that the body had accepted the lawsuit filed by Venezuela against Argentina for serious violations of international law, which allowed the US government to carry out the theft and subsequent scrapping of a aircraft that legitimately belonged to the Venezuelan people. Venezuela has condemned these violations and the illegal unilateral restrictive measures enabling them on multiple occasions.
In a memorandum sent to the members of the ICAO Council on Thursday, April 25, Salazar noted that the lawsuit was filed under Article 84 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, known as the Chicago Convention, specifically its Annexes and the Regulations for the Settlement of Disputes of the ICAO. He said that “it conforms in form to the requirements of Article 2 of the Regulation.”
Admiten demanda de Venezuela contra Argentina por avión de Emtrasur https://t.co/SxIrTDSAma#UniónDeLosPueblos #25Abr pic.twitter.com/qxhfAQ5FDP
— Radio Miraflores #LaVozDeLaVerdad (@SomosRMNoticias) April 25, 2024
The ICAO head reported that “the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (the plaintiff) affirms that, since June 8, 2022, the Argentinian Republic (the defendant) has committed violations of several articles of the Chicago Convention (namely: articles 3 bis, 4, 12, 13, 15, 16, 22, 27, 28, 32, 33, 44 and 82).”
The lawsuit specifies that these violations were carried out “through the application of illegal unilateral restrictive measures of a discriminatory nature against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”
According to the communication, “the plaintiff alleges that such violations occurred within the framework of the inconveniences suffered by non-scheduled flights identified with the numbers ESU 9217 and 9218, carried out with the Boeing 747-300 aircraft registration YV 3531 belonging to the Conviasa Consortium and leased by it to the Empresa de Transporte Aereocargo del Sur SA, EMTRASUR, whose ICAO code is ESU078.”
Although Venezuela showed irrefutable evidence regarding the proper documentation of the crew and cargo, as well as the documents with the characteristics of the journey, Argentina made multiple attempts to avoid accountability and retain the aircraft in its territory.
Then the current Argentinian government, led by Javier Milei, allowed the aircraft to be taken away by the United States on a secret flight, in the middle of the night and through misleading information provided to Argentina’s neighboring countries, in addition to turning off the plane’s radar in Colombian airspace. Once in the United States, the aircraft was taken to a facility in Florida and scrapped.
The aircraft was part of the Venezuelan government’s humanitarian operations program during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was arbitrarily grounded in Argentina from June 2022 to February 2024 before being stolen y the US.
(Telesur)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
