About a month after Argentine authorities confiscated a Venezuelan plane over possible ties to the Revolutionary Guards and began legal proceedings against crew members who flew it, more details are revealed
Paraguayan president Mario Abdu Benitez said on Friday that "a large number of the Venezuelan-Iranian crew members of the confiscated plane have links to international terrorism."
He also added that one of the crew members of the Boeing 747 "underwent surgery to change his face in Cuba", saying that this discovery was "as if taken from a movie".
In early June, after the plane was denied entry to Uruguay, the crew was forced to return to Asiza International Airport in Buenos Aires, where it has since been delayed by the authorities along with the entire crew of the plane.
Argentine opposition congressman Gerardo Milman later told Israel Today that the flight, whose exact purpose has not yet been determined, was part of a "joint intelligence operation by SEBIN (Venezuela's intelligence service) and Iranian intelligence,"
19 people said.
The Iranian and Venezuelan staff are detained in Argentina without the possibility of leaving the country, their passports have been confiscated and the investigation around them continues.
In recent days law enforcement in Buenos Aires has ordered an extension of the stage of gathering evidence and proof, in a move that includes examining the plane's black box (which was confiscated until the end of proceedings) as well as detailing a request from countries where the aircraft has passed in recent weeks.
The Argentine authorities confiscated the plane after receiving intelligence from a foreign source about the plane's problematic background, and according to the investigation, it turns out to be an Iranian plane that was leased to the Venezuelan airline in order to overcome American sanctions.
It also turned out that the Iranian pilot is a key figure in the arms shipments that Iran carries out in Africa and the Middle East as part of Revolutionary Guards operations, including in Syria, and at least a number of other crew members were also associated with the Revolutionary Guards.
It is actually a plane of the Iranian airline Mahan Air but it has been used by the Venezuelan transport company since February this year, and has already transported dozens of tons of cargo across Latin America.
The plane was confiscated following information received about ties by five Iranian crew members with Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards.
The investigation reveals that the pilot, Golmarza Carnal, is a former general in the Revolutionary Guards Air Force and Space, and was directly involved in Mahan Air's cargo flights to Syria through its cargo arm, Fars Air Qeshm.
The plane itself was used for domestic flights in Iran, but last year as mentioned moved to Venezuela and repainted it.
Since then both Iranians and Venezuelans have been using it around the world.
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