The Argentine justice ordered this Wednesday the seizure of the Venezuelan-Iranian plane held at the airport International of Buenos Aires, as part of an investigation for possible links with international terrorism, judicial sources confirmed to Efe.
According to these sources, the justice system decided to seize the aircraft in order to obtain more information regarding what the flight crew, made up of 5 Iranians and 14 Venezuelans, whose passports were previously withheld, was doing in Buenos Aires.
The exact time of seizure of the plane is still unknown and the cause remains a summary secret, these sources concluded.
The plane in question, a Boeing 747 Dreamliner cargo, was owned by the Iranian company Mahan Air and currently belongs to Emtrasur, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan Consortium of Aeronautical Industries and Air Services (Conviasa), companies that are sanctioned by the Treasury Department of USA.
The aircraft entered Argentina on June 6 with a cargo from Mexico, following a stopover in Venezuela, bound for the Ezeiza international airport, and on Wednesday it took off to go to Uruguay to load fuel, but landed once more at the Argentine airport because the neighboring country did not allow its landing.
In Argentina, the oil companies do not load fuel to the plane for fear of US sanctions.
Since this week, the Argentine justice has carried out an investigation to elucidate the possible links of the crew with international terrorism, since one of its members, the Iranian Gholamreza Gashemihas the same name as a member of the Quds Forces, a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, defined by the United States as a terrorist organization.
The Argentine Security Minister, Aníbal Fernández, stated this Wednesday that the country’s authorities followed “all the steps” regarding the plane, complying with all the established protocols.
Likewise, the chief of staff, Juan Manzur, maintained that all the areas involved in this case “already explained in great detail” what happened and pointed out that the issue “is in the hands of justice.”
Argentina suffered two terrorist attacks in the 1990s – on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) and on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires – and the local justice system pointed to powerful people from Iran and the Hezbollah group as responsible.
