EMTRASUR's Boeing-747 stolen by the US. Photo: AFP.
By Misión Verdad – Feb 12, 2024
After 20 months of configuring a new act of looting and piracy, it was learned yesterday that the Boeing 747-300M plane owned by the Venezuelan company EMTRASUR has left the city of Buenos Aires bound for the United States, consummating the theft of the aircraft that began on June 8, 2022, when it was detained at the airport by Argentine authorities.
In just over a year and a half, we have witnessed the systematic violation of public international law and the regulations applicable to international civil aeronautics. We have also witnessed the way in which the extraterritoriality of US laws operates with the consent of national authorities in various countries. and how, in the face of the pretensions of the powerful, only the dignity remains of those who, knowing that they acted lawfully, refuse to accept their abuses and arbitrariness.
In accordance with the exhaustive follow-up of the EMTRASUR case from this outlet, we present an updated chronology of the most notable events of this thriller that reveals the actual functioning of the alleged “rules-based order” that the West, with the United States at the helm, so loudly proclaims.
• June 4, 2022. The Boeing 747-300M plane landed in the Mexican city of Querétaro, where it would pick up merchandise from the Volkswagen company. The cargo ship landed around 6:30 a.m. (Central Mexico time).
• June 5, 2022. The Plane departed from Querétaro at 6:37 p.m. “with the knowledge of the Federal Civil Aviation Agency, the National Migration Institute,” the customs authorities, and the airport administration, all certified Mexican authorities.
• June 6, 2022. The Boeing 747-300M aircraft owned by EMTRASUR arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from Querétaro, Mexico, after temporarily laying over in the city of Córdoba. Due to the sanctions imposed against Venezuela, the Shell company refused to fulfill the contract, previously prepaid, to supply fuel to the aircraft at the Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires.
• June 8, 2022. The crew decides to fly to Uruguay to refuel. Near Uruguayan airspace, the government of that country decides to revoke the permit, forcing the plane to return to Buenos Aires. Again in Argentina, the National Immigration Directorate retains the crew’s passports and authorizes their provisional stay, which does not include their legal entry into the country. That same day, the cargo and the plane were inspected, but the authorities did not find anything of interest.
• June 17, 2022. The Argentinian Minister of National Security Aníbal Fernández said: “The analysis of the Federal Police is that there is no specific relationship with terrorist organizations.”
• June 18, 2022. Judge Villena did not find any evidence linking the crew to acts of terrorism or illegal espionage, based on the content of the phones and documents retained in a raid (which was ordered on June 14).
• June 27, 2022. Judge Villena authorized, due to lack of strong evidence, the return of the phones to the 14 Venezuelan crew members but retained the devices of the five Iranian crew members. That same day, a group of 12 senators from the US Republican Party asked the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick B. Garland, to “promptly respond and help Argentina” to investigate the EMTRASUR plane.
• July 19, 2022. The Court of the District of Columbia (Washington, DC), headed by Judge Michael Harvey, issued a seizure order for EMTRASUR’s Boeing 747, justifying that “the plane is subject to confiscation based on violations of “US export control laws related to the unauthorized transfer of the Mahan Air aircraft.” The court argued that in 2008, the United States Department of Commerce issued “a denial order prohibiting Mahan Air from participating in any transaction involving any product exported from the United States.”
• July 25, 2022. Judge Villena orders the release of the cargo (Volkswagen auto parts) from the EMTRASUR plane.
• August 2, 2022. Judge Villena authorizes the departure from Argentina and the return of passports to 12 of the crew: 11 Venezuelans and one Iranian. That same day, the United States Department of Justice transmitted a request to the Argentine authorities for the seizure of the Boeing 747 plane, an order coming from the US Court of the District of Columbia.
• August 8, 2022. Prosecutor Incardona appeals Judge Villena’s ruling, hindering the crew’s departure from the country, and the resolution passes to the La Plata Chamber.
• August 11, 2022. Within the framework of the Treaty of Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters with the United States, approved by Law 24,034, Judge Villena agrees to the United States’ request to seize the Venezuelan plane held in Ezeiza. The FBI participates in the operation. Earlier, according to Télam, prosecutor Incardona had ruled that the demand of the United States Justice to seize EMTRASUR’s Boeing 747-300M was “formally appropriate.”
• Between August 16 and 17, 2022. EMTRASUR’s defense appealed the decision to seize the plane, arguing that the treaty on which Judge Villena was based is criminal in nature, so the commercial and economic spheres are left out of its jurisdiction, as expressed in the United States’ request for seizure of the Venezuelan plane.
• On August 22, 2022. It emerged to the press that Judge Villena denied Argentinian lawyers Gabriel Palmeiro and Maximiliano Rusconi to represent Venezuela and EMTRASUR, in a maneuver that sought to illegally deprive Venezuela of its legitimate right to defend its detained citizens and its commercial interests, as it was a large aircraft that had been carrying out important humanitarian work.
• On August 27, 2022. In what can be interpreted as a response synchronized with US Ambassador Ostfield’s statement, Argentinian media reported that the prosecutor before the Federal Chamber of La Plata, Diego Iglesias, supported the resolution made by Judge Federico Villena to seize the EMTRASUR plane and was also in favor of the maneuver to override the defense of Venezuela in pursuit of the rights of the EMTRASUR crew members.
• September 13, 2022. The Federal Chamber of La Plata granted authorization for the 12 crew members to leave Argentina.
• September 27, 2022. It emerged that Judge Federico Villena resolved the dismissal of 14 crew members of the EMTRASUR aircraft.
• October 14, 2022. Argentine courts ordered the release of five crew members of the EMTRASUR company plane who were still in Argentina under investigation for alleged links to terrorism.
• May 4, 2023. Randolph Moss, a US federal judge, ordered the confiscation of the EMTRASUR plane held since 2022 at the Ezeiza Airport.
• December 29, 2023. Judge Federico Villena decided to comply with the confiscation ordered by the United States courts of the Boeing 747-300, registration number YV-3531.
• January 3, 2024. EMTRASUR issues a statement condemning the arbitrary and illegal decision of Argentine judge Federico Villena to seize, at the request of the United States, the Boeing 747-300 aircraft.
• February 5, 2024. Argentine media accuse a diplomatic official of the Venezuelan embassy in Argentina of espionage who was seeking information about the whereabouts of the EMTRASUR jet at the Ezeiza airport, in Buenos Aires.
• February 10, 2024. The Embassy of Venezuela repudiates, through an official statement, the information spread by the newspaper Clarín in which there is misinformation and speculation about the actions of a diplomatic official of said embassy who sought to establish the presence of the aircraft in the airport.
• February 11, 2024. The Bolivarian Alliance of the People, People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA – TCP) repudiates the attempts to complete the theft of the Venezuelan aircraft, anticipating the actions already announced to extract the plane from Argentina.
• February 12, 2024. During the early morning hours, the plane owned by EMTRASUR took off, bound for the United States, materializing the action of looting and piracy by Washington.
This same day, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry issued an official statement categorically repudiating the blatant theft of the aircraft after the collusion between the governments of the United States and Argentina, who violated all the rules that regulate civil aeronautics, as well as such as the commercial, civil, and political rights that protect the aforementioned company, placing aeronautical safety in the region at risk.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
