Argentina authorizes 12 of the crew of the seized Venezuelan plane to leave the country

For three months and a week, 19 crew members (14 Venezuelans and five Iranians) of a plane seized by the Argentine justice at the request of the American have been held in a hotel in Buenos Aires on suspicion of having links with the terrorism.

Twelve crew members left Argentina last night after a court ordered their release and the return of their retained passports.

The other seven must remain in Buenos Aires, but their procedural situation must be defined within ten days, according to the ruling of a court of second instance.

Among those still in the country is Iranian pilot Gholamreza Ghasemi Abbas, whom Paraguayan intelligence services accused of being a member of Al Quds, an elite paramilitary arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Three other Iranians and three Venezuelans are also still being held at the hotel.

The novel “of the Venezuelan-Iranian plane”, as the local press calls it, began on June 6.

That day, a Boeing 747-300 from the Venezuelan company Emtrasur arrived at the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires from Mexico with its warehouses full of auto parts.

Two days later, the cargo plane left for Uruguay, but was denied landing and returned to Buenos Aires.

The Uruguayan refusal caught the attention of the Argentine authorities and the opposition requested to open an investigation.

The 14 crew members of Venezuelan nationality and the five Iranians were held in a hotel, while the cargo of the plane and the documentation with which the foreigners had entered the country were reviewed.

From that moment on, the plot began to unravel.

The first thing that attracted attention was the plane: it had been incorporated into the Venezuelan fleet six months ago, but during the previous 15 years it had flown for the Iranian airline Mahan Air, sanctioned by the United States for its alleged links to Al Quds.

The United States considers Al Quds a terrorist group and asked the South American country to retain the Boeing.

In turn, he announced retaliation for any company that provided him with logistical assistance.

Due to the warning, no local oil company wanted to sell him fuel and the plane was stranded in Ezeiza.

According to the route sheet of the Emtrasur plane, in its last month of activity it flew to Paraguay, Belarus, Iran and Moscow.

The Argentine justice investigates, with the collaboration of other countries, if it was used to carry out illicit activities.

It also investigates why the crew was much higher than required and there were five Iranian citizens in it.

At the request of Washington, the aircraft is embargoed.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, expressed his indignation a month ago at what he describes as "theft."

“They want to seize a plane in Argentina due to a decision of a court in Florida.

In other words, from now on a court in Florida or New York decides to take a ship, an airplane or any property from Venezuela or from any country and can do so,” Maduro said.

"Is there no respect for international law or is it that the United States courts rule in Argentina?" He questioned himself during a public speech.

The suspicions also extended to the crew, who at first had not attracted attention.

The Minister of the Interior, Aníbal Fernández, admitted that foreign organizations had sent information linking some of them to companies related to the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Argentina accuses members of Al Quds of being behind the worst attack in the country's history, the one perpetrated against the headquarters of the Jewish mutual society AMIA in 1994, which caused the death of 85 people.

On August 1, the judge in charge of the case, Federico Villena, had decided to lift the ban on leaving the country for 12 of the 19 occupants of the plane, but the measure was appealed by the prosecutor.

The Federal Court of Appeals ratified his release six weeks later.

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