Members of human rights organizations walk alongside one of the planes that carried out "death flights," when detainees were tossed out into the sea during Argentina's last military dictatorship, on the tarmac of the Jorge Newbery international airport in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Saturday, June 24, 2023.
Argentina’s government will add the plane to the Museum of Memory, which is in what was the junta’s most infamous secret detention center. Known as the ESMA, it housed many of the detainees who were later tossed alive from the “death flights” into the ocean or river Throughout his quest, Ceraudo said, countless people failed to understand why he remained steadfastly focused on finding the junta’s aircraft, especially since the bodies of many of the dictatorship’s victims are still undiscovered.
Prosecutors say it is impossible to know how many detainees in all were thrown from the planes. But at least 71 bodies of suspected death flight victims washed up along the coast — 44 in Argentina and 27 in neighboring Uruguay, according to the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, a non-governmental group.
Of the five Skyvan planes known to have been used in death flights, two had been destroyed in the 1982 war with Britain over the Falkland Islands. The three others were sold in 1994 to CAE Aviation, a Luxemburg-based firm. One of those planes was sold to GB Airlink, which used it to provide private mail services to the Bahamas from Florida.