大象传媒

During the dictatorship in Argentina which ended in 1983, the military spent seven years engaged in a ruthless campaign against suspected left-wing dissidents and anyone else they suspected of being subversives. Some 30,000 people were killed or forcibly disappeared during the so-called 'Dirty War' - as the military campaign came to be known internationally, but which Argentinian critics of the term say downplays the one-sided nature of it.

Many people simply disappeared and were never seen again, in what were extrajudicial killings. One of the most notorious forms of disappearance was in the form of 鈥渄eath flights鈥� - a practice that saw victims thrown out of aeroplanes to their deaths.

Now, newly uncovered flight logs reveal how 12 people were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean. The Argentine journalist Uki Go帽i told 大象传媒 Newsday what the discoveries led to.

"The ultimate secret was: who were the pilots?... There in the flight logs were the names of the pilots, and in particular was this flight of 14 December 1977 where eight women were killed... and they went and found the pilots... they were commercial pilots then, and they put the three of them on trial. One of them died while the trial was taking place, but the other two were sentenced and are serving life prison sentences.鈥�

(Pic: Argentina鈥檚 Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group, whose children were among the dissidents who disappeared at the hands of the military dictatorship, demonstrating in Buenos Aires in 1982; Credit: Getty Images)

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