The court on Tuesday (14) banned the exit from Argentina of 14 Venezuelans who are part of the crew of a Venezuelanflagged cargo plane also carrying five Iranians whose passports have already been confiscated by the authorities, judicial sources said.
The measure was taken by the Federal Judge of Lomas de Zamora, Federico Villena, after a search and seizure operation carried out in his presence by the Federal Police in the hotel rooms housing the crew of the Boeing 747 detained since 8. June at Ezeiza International Airport.
“They came to search the 19 rooms, not the hotel. Everything went smoothly, they were very correct, without any problems. We weren’t allowed to go upstairs, so we didn’t have access to learn about what happened,” the director of Hotel Plaza Central Canning, César Giuggioloni, told AFP at the entrance to the facility.
The case is subject to legal secrecy.
“There are five Iranians and 14 Venezuelans, each occupying a single room out of the 51 rooms they have at the hotel,” confirmed Giuggioloni, adding that he had been told “that they would be leaving first on Monday and then tomorrow [quartafeira] and now I think they’re scheduled for Friday.”
seven hours of operation
According to a police source, mobile phones, personal computers and documents of various kinds were confiscated in the operation, which began at dawn and lasted seven hours.
Located in the city of Ezeiza, near Buenos Aires International Airport, 40 km from the capital, on the lower floor there is a shopping center with several shops and restaurants.
“Passengers have the opportunity to come and go freely, they have no restrictions,” assured the hotel director.
The ban on Venezuelans leaving the country is in addition to a similar measure that has been in place against Iranian crew members since Monday if “there is a reasonable suspicion that the reason for entry exists [na Argentina] could not be real or true,” the court ruling said.
Argentina considers the presence of Iranian travelers sensitive amid Interpol’s red arrest alerts against former authorities in the Asian country accused of the 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which left 85 dead and about 300 injured.
The Delegation of the Argentine Israeli Associations (DAIA) is one of the parties to the judicial investigation into the plane’s case.
route
The plane, which arrived in Argentina from Mexico on June 6 and then tried unsuccessfully to land in Uruguay, belongs to Emtrasur, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s Conviasa, which is on the US Treasury Department sanctions list.
But Venezuela, whose President Nicolás Maduro was visiting Tehran over the weekend, has made no official statement on the case.
In Mexico, a government official in Querétaro confirmed to AFP on Tuesday that the plane took off from its airport on June 5, assuring international protocols were being followed.
“The entire review carried out in Querétaro by the federal authorities and the airport administration was in accordance with international protocols,” said local government secretary for sustainable development Marco Antonio Del Prete.
The flight arrived in Querétaro with four crew members and received clearance in Mexico to fly the CaracasQuerétaroCaracasBuenos AiresCaracas route, he added.
“I don’t know if the flight plan changed after it left Mexican airspace,” Del Prete noted.
The freighter landed at the Mexico airport around 6:30 a.m. local time (8:30 a.m. EDT) on June 4, he said, without providing the identity or nationality of the crew, as it was not within his remit.
According to the official, the flight arrived two days late due to a delay in the delivery of documents.
After refueling and loading “industrial goods,” the Boeing left Querétaro at 6:37 p.m. on June 5 “with the knowledge of the Federal Office of Civil Aviation, the National Institute for Migration,” customs officials and the airport administration, he said.
In May, the same plane flew to Paraguay, from where it took a load of cigarettes to the Caribbean island of Aruba. Paraguayan Interior Minister Federico González announced Tuesday that he had fired two employees who had authorized the landing.