The Plaza Central Hotel in Canning, where the five Iranians who were traveling on a Venezuelan plane now stranded in Ezeiza and the center of a judicial investigation are staying, has been raided since early this morning.
According to what was reported by LN+, federal judge Federico Villena, in charge of the case, has been in the lodging together with police forces since 1:30 am to carry out these procedures.
In the operation, 18 cell phones, 7 notebooks, 5 iPads, 15 passports and other documentation have already been seized. The agents are assisted in this instance by a translator to achieve better communication with these men, he noted. The Argentine Nation.
In an unusual move for the hotel, which is filled to the brim with cars outside, the owner of the establishment said he did not have more details about what is happening behind the doors, while the search and identification work continues.
This Monday, Villena made the decision that the passports of these five people be withheld for a period of 72 hours in which they will not be able to leave the country and also requested that the Airport Security Police (PSA) inform him of any movement that occurs around the Boeing 747.
Meanwhile, the cargo aircraft has been at the international airport since last Monday, when the Iranians landed with 14 Venezuelans from Córdoba, where they had previously landed due to poor weather conditions marked by fog.
Inside, the plane carried auto parts. Its crew was approached by the authorities, initially, due to a problem in the flight manifest: there were seven names corresponding to Iranian citizens, when in fact there were only five on board.
The case took another turn when it became known that there could be a link between these people and the Quds force, a group classified as terrorist by the United States. While the national authorities assured that none of the crew members had a red alert or a prohibition to enter the country, opposition deputies Gerardo Milman and Ricardo López Murphy filed a complaint to investigate the travelers.
The Minister of Security, Aníbal Fernández, said that one of the names of the crew coincides with a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
”If you ask me if it’s him, I don’t know. The name matches. It is what we have as concrete data,” said the national official, who added: “Until now it is a name that is a homonym, as a homonym you cannot forcefully stop a flight.”
For his part, the head of the Federal Intelligence Agency, Agustín Rossi, asserted that the Iranians were “instructors” who were training the crew to fly that Emtrasur Cargo plane, the cargo division of the Venezuelan flag firm Conviasa, which was used for the last 15 years by the Iranian company Mahan Air, sanctioned by the United States.