Last Tuesday a Dutch airline pilot, a naturalised Argentinian, was arrested in Spain, just when he was stepping aboard his plane for his last flight back to the Netherlands before retirement, with his wife and son present for it. The reason for this heavyhanded arrest? He’s been charged with having been involved with the death flights carried out by the junta that ruled Argentinia between 1976 and 1983. Julio Poch supposedly was stationed at the infamous ESMA, the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics, which was turned into a prison and torture centre, from which hundreds. if not thousands of prisoners were taken into flights over the open ocean, then dropped out of the plane. Allegedly Poch had been bragging about this to some of his co-workers once the Argentinian junta was back in the news again due to the marriage of crown prince Willem Alexander to Maxima Zorreguita, daughter of one of the ministers involved with the junta…
That was back in 2000, so why it took nine years for this guy to be arrested is a question the Dutch justice ministry needs to answer. The Netherlands doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Argentina, unlike Spain, which is the reason he was arrested there, but the Dutch authorities could’ve at the very least informed their Argentine colleagues about Poch. It’s a bit of a trend, I’m afraid. The Netherlands is very lax when it comes to dealing with known war criminals and such like, despite its rhetoric. It just isn’t a priority for either the government or the police.
But the arrest of Julio Ponch, though decades after his suspected crimes, is still good news for those wanting some justice for the victims of America’s War on Terror. Thirty years from now, will we see arrests of pilots of extraordinary rendition flights?