Death flights

Death flights (Spanish: vuelos de la muerte) are a form of extrajudicial killing practised by military forces in possession of aircraft: victims are dropped to their death from airplanes or helicopters into large bodies of water (e.g. the ocean). Death flights have been carried out in a number of internal conflicts, including the 1957 Battle of Algiers. Most notably a great many victims were killed this way by the junta dictatorship during the Argentine 1974–1983 "Dirty War".

During the Argentine Dirty War, from 1976 to 1983 an estimated 10,000 people were "disappeared", kidnapped clandestinely by groups acting for the dictatorship. Many were killed in death flights, a practice initiated by Admiral Luis María Mendía, usually after detention and torture. Typically they were drugged into a stupor, loaded into aircraft, stripped, and dropped into the Río de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean.

According to the testimony of Adolfo Scilingo, convicted in Spain of crimes against humanity under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction 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. He estimated that the navy conducted the flights every Wednesday for two years, 1977 and 1978, and that 1,500 to 2,000 people were killed.

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 Pentothal. And shortly after, they became really drowsy, and from there we loaded them onto trucks and headed off for the airfield." Scilingo said that the Argentine Navy was "still hiding what happened during the dirty war".

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