The
death flights were a form of
forced disappearanceIn international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
routinely practiced during the Argentine "
Dirty WarThe Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
", begun by Admiral
Luis María MendíaLuis María Mendía was the Argentine Chief of Naval Operations in 1976-77, with the rank of vice-admiral. According to confessions gathered by Horacio Verbitsky and made by Adolfo Scilingo , Luis María Mendía was the architect of the "death flight" assassination method whereby the Argentine state...
. Victims of death flights were first drugged into a stupor, hustled aboard fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters, stripped naked and pushed into the
Río de la PlataThe Río de la Plata —sometimes rendered River Plate in British English and the Commonwealth, and occasionally rendered [La] Plata River in other English-speaking countries—is the river and estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River on the border between Argentina and...
or the Atlantic Ocean to drown. Extrajudicial killings have been conducted in a manner substantively similar to those of the Argentine death flights, during the 1957
Battle of AlgiersThe Battle of Algiers was a campaign of guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of hit-and-run attacks by the FLN against the French Police in Algiers. Violence escalated...
, and other conflicts.
Death flights during the Dirty War in Argentina
According to the testimony of
Adolfo ScilingoAdolfo Scilingo was an Argentine naval officer who is currently serving 30 years in a Spanish prison after being convicted on April 19, 2005 for crimes against humanity, including extra-judicial execution.-Charges:Scilingo was charged under Spain's universal jurisdiction laws by investigating...
, convicted by a Spanish court of crimes against humanity under the doctrine of
universal jurisdictionUniversal jurisdiction or universality principle is a principle in public international law whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over persons whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of residence, or any other...
in 2005, there were 180-200 death flights in the years 1977 and 1978; Scilingo confessed to participating in two such flights, with 13 and 17 people killed respectively.
As an added twist, victims were sometimes made to dance for joy in celebration of the freedom that they were told awaited them. In an earlier interview, in 1996, Scilingo said, "They were played lively music and made to dance for joy, because they were going to be transferred to the south. [...] After that, they were told they had to be vaccinated due to the transfer, and they were injected with
PentothalSodium thiopental, better known as Sodium Pentothal , thiopental, thiopentone sodium, or Trapanal , is a rapid-onset short-acting barbiturate general anaesthetic...
. And shortly after, they became really drowsy, and from there we loaded them onto trucks and headed off for the airfield."
Scilingo says that the
Argentine NavyThe Navy of the Argentine Republic or Armada of the Argentine Republic is the navy of Argentina. It is one of the three branches of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, together with the Army and the Air Force....
is "still hiding what happened during the dirty war". In May 2010, Spain extradited to Argentina pilot Julio Alberto Poch. Poch, who was born in 1952, had been arrested in Valencia, Spain, on September 23, 2009 and was wanted in Argentina for his alleged participation as a pilot on the death flights. In December 2010 an Argentinean judge dismissed all charges against Poch for lack of evidence and ordered his release pending further investigation. In November 2011 the investigating magistrate indicted Poch for his role in the disappearance of 41 people, and ordered him held without bail.
Algeria
Death flights were used during the Algerian War by French paratroopers of the 10th Parachute Division under
Jacques MassuJacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez crisis.-Early life:Jacques Massu was born in Châlons-sur-Marne to a family of military officers; his father was an artillery officer...
during the
Battle of AlgiersThe Battle of Algiers was a campaign of guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of hit-and-run attacks by the FLN against the French Police in Algiers. Violence escalated...
. After it was discovered that the corpses sometimes resurfaced, the executioners began to attach concrete blocks to their victims' feet. These victims came to be known as "Bigeard's shrimps" (""), after one of the paratrooper commanders,
Marcel BigeardMarcel "Bruno" Bigeard was a French military officer who fought in World War II, Indochina and Algeria. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French 'unconventional' warfare thinking from that time onwards...
.
Malagasy Uprising
During the Malagasy Uprising of 1947, in
MananjaryMananjary is a fivondronana located in Vatovavy-Fitovinany Region in Madagascar. The region has a total population of 233,697 ....
hundreds of Malagasy were killed, among them 18 women and a group of prisoners thrown from aircraft.