The government celebrated the contribution of Paraguayan Intelligence that allowed it to avoid a “national and international” scandal by prohibiting at the last minute the entry of the Emtrasur plane, the Venezuelan company linked to Iran and accused – like some of its crew members – of collaborating with Internationally considered terrorist organizations.
According to what the Minister of Defense, Javier García, reported to Parliament, the aircraft was just a few minutes away from being able to land, which was prevented after several telephone calls crossed that ended with the aircraft returning to Argentina.
The details were revealed in the schedule that García described this Thursday before the Senate Defense Commission. According to what he explained, Uruguay received the first Boeing 747-300 overflight request on June 7, 24 hours before what the minister described as “D-Day.” There it was requested to fly over the airspace and an expected arrival at 5:00 p.m. the next day.
After passing through Córdoba, the aircraft had arrived in Buenos Aires, where the crew spent 48 hours in a hotel. He left for Montevideo on Wednesday, June 8, and 25 minutes after leaving the Argentine capital, he confirmed his original plan: to be in Carrasco until 8:00 p.m. that same day. It would be three hours “refuel, make some arrangements and leave”, the minister commented.
But minutes before leaving Ezeiza there was another request for an overflight. There, the Emtrasur plane asks to extend its stay in Uruguay until Thursday the 9th, at 4:00 p.m. The reason: the need for rest of its crew. A situation “flashy” for the Ministry of Defense, if it is taken into account that at the international level it is considered that a crew is unable to continue operating after 12 continuous hours of flight. “In 30 minutes, after spending two days resting in Buenos Aires, they were going to cross the Río de la Plata and asked us to extend their stay for rest. Striking, isn’t it?”, ironically the minister.
In any case, and before the consultation of the senator Alejandro Sánchez, García admitted that the change in the flight plan had been originally authorized. “The information had not yet arrived,” he explained. “We didn’t have this role.” He was referring to a report from the National Intelligence Secretariat of Paraguay, which indicated that both the plane and some of its crew appear to be linked to terrorist organizations.
That report, for whose details the minister asked the legislators to reserve, spoke of an association with Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian Lebanese militia party, accused of being the author of the attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires in 1994. The association would take place through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran and one of its divisions, the Quds Force, specialized in asymmetric warfare and military intelligence.
The timeline of events revealed by the government indicates that the request to change the flight plan was received by Uruguay on Wednesday 8 at 1:41 p.m. It was aproved. But at 14:07, García received a call from his colleague Luis Alberto Heber. In four minutes, the Minister of the Interior informed him of the data that the intelligence services “of a neighboring and friendly country” had given him that warned about the movements of the plane.
Garcia said he cut off communication 14:11 and immediately contacted the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Luis De León, to whom he sent the registration of the aircraft and the crew list via WhatsApp, ordering him to prevent his entry. Until that moment he did not know where the plane was. The commander called him in turn at 14:48, to inform him that his entry into Uruguayan airspace had been prevented. At 14:50García called Heber to convey the result of the decision. Subsequently, President Luis Lacalle Pou was informed of the entire process.
Go and come back
Another of the “striking” details provided by García is that the plane left Buenos Aires 15 minutes earlier than expected, “like quickening the step”. The minister also took it upon himself to reject the accusations of the Venezuelan government, which affirmed that Uruguay acted “irresponsibly” by denying entry to the ship and putting it in danger due to its alleged lack of fuel.
Between taking off from Ezeiza to point Dorvo, at the entrance to Uruguayan airspace where the plane was stopped, the plane was in flight for 12 minutes. In total, until he returned to Buenos Aires, he was in the air for 36 minutes. He had left there with 24,000 liters of fuel and returned with 17,000, enough for another hour and a half of flight. “I had to go back and forth to Montevideo twice,” Garcia said. As evidence, provided a conversation of 5 minutes and 36 seconds of real time between the aircraft crew and the national air traffic control.
“Today we can be calm”, said the minister when wondering what would have happened if the plane was authorized to enter Uruguay. “We are in a Senate commission looking at what happens in another country, but it could well have happened that everything that happens in Argentina would have happened here, with all the consequences that this has,” he said.
In the first place, he pointed out, the same companies that refused to supply him with fuel in Argentina would not have done so here either. “The entire political system was going to hover today over the circumstance of a plane about which there are well-founded suspicions of its involvement in international terrorism and that some of its crew members are in that condition,” Garcia said. “Imagine the problem we would be in today in Uruguay and what it would have meant from the point of view of the consequences this has on the life of the country!” he exclaimed.
The government, Garcia said, wanted to send a strong and clear signal that Uruguay does not want to have anything to do “not even closely” with any terrorist group or with aid, logistical support or financing of terrorism. Not even by omission or ignorance.
“The information we received allowed us to make a decision in four minutes,” said the minister. “If we had not taken it correctly, as we did, today we would have been in a tremendous mess from the national and international point of view for almost two weeks,” he insisted.
