The government of Argentina immobilized and retained a cargo plane with a Venezuelan flag, but which belongs to a company of Iransanctioned by the United States and where regarding five Iranian crew members and regarding twelve Venezuelans were traveling.
Official PSA sources told Infobae that “their passport was withheld, they can only leave the country on a regular flight.”
The Boeing 747-3B3(M) model plane of the Emtrasur company landed on Monday at the Córdoba airport due to the fog that was in Buenos Aires, but later arrived at the Ezeiza international air terminal. They were waiting for him with intelligence information that had been provided by various international agencies.
Retention of the Venezuelan plane in Argentina
However, the PSA, Customs, Immigration and the PFA intervened in a joint operation. “It was transporting auto parts for an automotive company, the cargo was checked several times, but nothing strange was found and it was released,” said a senior PSA source.
Despite this, some of the Iranian crew members have alleged links to the Quds Force, a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps specializing in military intelligence operations.
“They have a temporary stay. At this time they can only leave the country on a regular plane, but they cannot get on the Emtrasur plane », he explained to Infobae an official source. At the same time, he highlighted regional coordination with the governments of Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.
travel hypothesis
Among the hypotheses handled by the authorities is that the trip to Buenos Aires “would be route recognition tests.”
The plane tried to travel to Uruguay in the followingnoon of Wednesday to load fuel to be able to return to Venezuela. However, the government of that country decided to close the airspace and prevented the maneuver. Therefore, he returned to Ezeiza.
«They came from Mexico, they had an agreement with a broker to load fuel but they dropped it on the way. At that time, neither YPF nor Shell are going to load fuel,” explained a source.
Several international agencies kept watch on this aircraft because until very recently it belonged to the Iranian company Mahan Air. It is subject to sanctions by the United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Fifteen days ago he was in Paraguay and allegedly took a load of cigarettes to Aruba,” said an official who monitored the operation.
