Almost three months after his arrest, Transavia-pilot Julio Poch is still awaiting his next destination in a Spanish prison. After a Dutch judge refused to order the Netherlands to ask Spain for his extradition, Poch most probably will stand trial in Argentina.

by Robert-Jan Friele

Poch, 55, was arrested on September 22nd in Valencia, Spain. Argentine judge Sergio Torres suspects the Buenos Aires-born pilot of human rights abuses committed during his country’s last dictatorship which ruled from 1976 to 1983. Six days after the arrest, Torres filed an extradition request to the Spanish government.
 

In order to prevent being sent to Argentina, Poch demanded a Dutch court to ask Spain for his extradition. He moved to the Netherlands in 1988 and has an Argentine-Dutch nationality since 1995. Poch's lawyer Gerard Spong also stated that the Argentine justice-system is slow and that his client could spend years in pre-trial-arrest.

With the Dutch refusal to ask for Poch's extradition to the Netherlands, it is likely that Spain will extradite him to Argentina. There, Poch will be defended by Gerardo Ibañez, well known for representing former military accused of human rights abuses. Ibañez says that he does not expect his client to be extradited “before February, or maybe even March.”

Once in an Argentine court, judge Torres will try to add Poch's case into the ESMA-megatrial that started on December 11th. During the dictatorship, former navy school ESMA (Escuela Mecánica de la Armada) functioned as a clandestine detention-centre where people where held, tortured, raped, killed and disappeared. One method of disappearance where the so-called ‘flights of death’: prisoners were given an anaesthetic and thrown out of planes above the Rio de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean.

Based on the declarations of four former colleagues of Poch, judge Torres has accused him of having carried out these flights when he was a young marine-pilot. The colleagues have reproduced statements made by Poch, justifying the dictatorship, “that they should have killed them all” [the opponents of the regime] and admitting the flights (“at that moment, they threw living people out of my plane in order to execute them”).

Spong and Poch's family have denied these accusations, saying he was misunderstood during a dinner after they had a few drinks. Furthermore, they point out that since Poch was based in Bahia Blanca during the dictatorship, he could never have participated in flights leaving from Buenos Aires, 506 kilometres up north.

Poch's Argentine lawyer Ibañez presents a document that supposedly proves that his client was not able to fly the two-engine machines used for the death flights. “He was a fighter-pilot in one-engine machines. As you can see in the document, Poch himself asks his superiors permission to learn to fly with two engines.”

However, it is doubtful that judge Torres will be impressed by these arguments. For years, Poch's name already figured on a list with pilots suspected of having carried out clandestine missions. Also, the Argentine navy is known for its rotation of personal during these missions, to get as many people as possible involved in the atrocities.

Adolfo Scilingo, the only captain that has confessed his role in the flights, told journalist Horacio Verbitsky in his book The Flight “They [the navy personal] came from all over the country. Maybe one or two didn’t participate, but they are a clear exception.”

In spite of all that, lawyer Ibañez shows a confident attitude: "My client is looking
forward to coming to Argentina and prove his innocence."