García appeared before the Senate Defense Commission to report on the decision not to allow the Venezuelan-Iranian plane, Emtrasur, to enter Uruguayan airspace.
The Secretary of State was accompanied by the Commander of the Air Force, Gen. Luis de León, and the director of the National Directorate of Civil Aviation (DINACIA), Gaetano Battagliese, among other authorities.
“There was information here that alerted about this plane, the background of this plane, and that it had served in a circumstance for logistical support for movements of terrorist organizations,” Garcia said.
He added: “This fundamental reason was based on information that we received from Paraguay and that for us had a sensitivity and security that could not be ignored, because that information was linked to the existence of a history of this plane in logistics activities, of support and aid to international terrorist movements, and the same with respect to some of its crew members”.
In this sense, he recalled that in Argentina people from that crew are being investigated “and it has been confirmed that they also have links with international terrorist groups, which have also generated terror and death very close to us, as are the cases of attacks on the AMIA and the Embassy of Israel in Argentina”.
The Secretary of State said that the opposition members of the Defense Commission said, under the minutes, that “they shared the decision made by the Executive Power, two members of the opposition said that with the information they had they shared the decision.”
Striking
On the other hand, García explained that in the overflight request of the flight plan that the plane’s crew had requested, there was a very striking feature. Minutes before leaving for Uruguay, they asked Uruguay to extend their stay in the country.
“It was a flight plan that was set to spend three hours at the airport, load fuel and leave at 8:00 p.m. from Uruguay on June 8, but minutes before leaving, they asked the aeronautical authorities for authorization to stay until the next day. day at 4:00 p.m.,” said the Secretary of State.
Most significantly, he said, the request was based on the crew’s need for rest. “This plane spent two days in Buenos Aires and the crew in a hotel, and the trip from Buenos Aires to Montevideo is 30 minutes, so it seemed that the reason for the need to rest after 30 minutes of flight does not seem to be very reliable and much less acceptable.”
He added that the fact that they had brought forward Ezeiza’s departure to Montevideo by 15 minutes is also striking.
Among other elements, García provided the Senate Commission with the audio of the contact between the aircraft crew and Air Traffic Control and aspects regarding the flight plan.
