Death flight
The flight to death (from the Spanish vuelos de la muerte ) was a form of murder or the " disappearance " of political prisoners without a trace , which was practiced during the so-called dirty war of the Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983) . France used this method regularly in the Algerian War (1954–1962) and in one case during the suppression of an uprising in Madagascar in 1947.
description
Admiral Luis María Mendía is considered to be the inventor of death flights. Victims of the Argentine death flights were first stunned, taken on board planes or helicopters, stripped and then dropped over the Río de la Plata or the Atlantic .
Argentina
According to Adolfo Scilingo , between 180 and 200 fatal flights took place in 1977 and 1978. Scilingo confessed to taking part in two such flights, each of which killed between 13 and 17 people.
The victims were regularly told that they would be flown to freedom. Music was played occasionally and the victims were asked to dance. Under the pretext of vaccination , they were injected with a sedative for the flight, according to Scilingo sodium thiopental .
Scilingo said the Argentine Navy was still covering up what happened during the dirty war. In May 2010, Spain extradited the Argentine pilot Julio Alberto Poch to Argentina. He was released in Argentina for lack of evidence. In November 2011, an investigative committee held Poch responsible for the murder of 41 people and requested his arrest.
Algeria
French paratroopers carried out death flights during the Algerian War . They threw suspicious Algerians from planes into the Mediterranean. After a number of corpses were washed ashore, their feet were weighted. The French secret service cynically named the murdered "crevettes Bigeard" ("Bigeard crabs") after one of the murdering officers, Marcel Bigeard . According to - difficult to verify - information from a French officer involved, 4,000 Algerians were murdered in this way. The commander in charge was the highly decorated General Jacques Massu . He was never held accountable and was in command of French troops in Germany from 1966 to 1969.
Madagascar
During the Malagasy uprising against the French colonial government in 1947, hundreds of Madagascans were murdered by the French colonial power in Mananjary ( Vatovavy-Fitovinany region ). 18 women and some prisoners were murdered in a death flight.
literature
- Horacio Verbitsky : The Flight. Confessions of an Argentinian Dirty Warrior. New Press, August 1996, ISBN 1-56584-009-7
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spain tries Argentine ex-officer (English) . In: BBC News , January 20, 2005. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
- ↑ Macabre new details emerge about Argentina's 'dirty war' (English) . In: CNN .
- ↑ http://www.scotsman.com/news/world/death-flight-captain-says-argentine-navy-is-hiding-horrors-1-671961
- ↑ Des guerres d'Indochine et d'Algérie aux dictatures d'Amérique latine ( Memento of the original of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Interview with Marie-Monique Robin from the French Human Rights League (LDH), January 10, 2007
- ^ Testimony of Paul Teitgen in the film by Yves Boisset, Que reste-t-il de la bataille d'Alger
- ↑ Jean Fremigacci, " La vérité sur la grande révolte de Madagascar ", L'Histoire , n ° 318, March 2007
