By Carlos Eduardo Sanchez on March 2, 2024
Venezuelan 747 cargo jet belonging to Venezuela destroyed at a Florida airport. Photo: X/@AecioEscalante.
Venezuela’s vice minister of anti-blockade policies, William Castillo, condemned the US vandalization of the Venezuelan 747 cargo jet, owned by Conviasa’s EMTRASUR air cargo company, after the theft carried out by the United States in complicity with the government of Javier Milei in Argentina.
Videos and photos spread via social media platforms show the cargo jet in the process of being destroyed, with the EMTRESUR name and Venezuelan license covered in paint the fuselage broken in half, and the tail section almost non-existent. According to unconfirmed social media reports the vandalization is taking place at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport (KTNT) located at the Everglades, approximately 60 kilometers west of Miami, Florida state.
Castillo pointed out this Wednesday, February 28, in a statement concerning the US coercive measures that led to the illegal seizure of the plane, that “when the opposition comes to ask for your vote because they want to fix the country, remind them that … all of them asked for sanctions against Venezuela.”
On February 12, the Argentinian government, chaired by Javier Milei, handed over the plane of the Venezuelan cargo company EMTRASUR to the United States, thus consummating the theft of the aircraft through a process of illegal confiscation.
The aircraft was sent to the state of Florida in the US after making a stopover in Haiti, carrying out the dispossession under the pretext of the unilateral and illegal blockade—euphemistically referred to as “sanctions”—illegally imposed against Venezuela.
At the beginning of January, an Argentinian federal judge accepted the request of the United States and ordered the delivery of the aircraft to the US. On repeated occasions, Venezuela condemned the procedure as constituting a theft by the governments of Argentina and the US.
The Argentinian judiciary ordered the grounding of the Venezuelan Boeing 747-300 at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the aircraft was being used to bring medicines and medical equipment to Venezuela. The illegal US and European sanctions made it extremely difficult for Venezuela to acquire medical supplies and respond to the pandemic.
Argentinian press reported that the maneuver to seize the Venezuelan plane was orchestrated by US and Israel intelligence apparatus and their local assets, claiming that the jet was part of a “dark Venezuelan-Iranian operation,” which even the Argentinian judiciary, heavily penetrated by US and Israeli operators, could not prove, leading to the eventual dropping of charges against the crew.
On December 30, 2023, an Argentinian judge announced the decision that the fate of the plane, hijacked by the Argentinian judiciary under US orders, would be subject to the norms of the Treaty of International Judicial Assistance between Argentina and the United States despite many legal experts’ claims that this treaty was not applicable. Since it is a bilateral treaty, its application against a third country, Venezuela, is in flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of states enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
Source: Orinoco Tribune