Death flights () are a form of extrajudicial killing in which the victims are dropped to their death from airplanes or helicopters into oceans, large rivers or even mountains. Death flights have been carried out in a number of internal conflicts, including by France during the 1947 Malagasy Uprising and the 1957 Battle of Algiers, and by the junta dictatorship during the Argentine Dirty War between 1976 and 1983. During the Bougainville conflict PNGDF helicopters were used to dispose of corpses that had died under torture, and in some cases, still-living victims.
Countries
Argentina
During the 1976–1983 Argentine Dirty War, many thousands of people disappeared, clandestinely kidnapped by groups acting for the dictatorship. Human rights groups in Argentina often cite a figure of 30,000 disappeared; Amnesty International estimates 20,000. 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, a former Argentine naval officer convicted in Spain in 2005 for crimes against humanity under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, there were 180–200 death flights during 1977 and 1978. Scilingo confessed to participating in two such flights, during which 13 and 17 people were killed, respectively. Scilingo estimated that the Argentine Navy conducted the flights every Wednesday for two years, 1977 and 1978, killing 1,500 to 2,000 people.
Victims were sometimes made to dance for joy in celebration of the freedom they were told awaited them. In an earlier 1996 interview, 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." At the time, Scilingo said that the Argentine Navy was "still hiding what happened during the Dirty War".
In May 2010, Spain extradited pilot Julio Alberto Poch to Argentina. Born in 1952, Poch 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. At his trial in February 2013, Poch denied that he had participated in the death flights, claiming everything he knew about them came from what he had read. After spending eight years in an Argentine jail, Poch was found not guilty by a court in Buenos Aires.
In April 2015, further arrests were made. It was reported that the death flights had started before 1976, and continued until 1983. To carry out the flights, a military unit, Batallón de Aviación del Ejército 601 (Army Air Battalion 601), was set up, with a commander, sub-commander, chief of staff, and officers from five companies. Soldiers who refused to take part, as well as others who acted as airfield guards and runway cleaners, testified they had seen live people and corpses loaded onto aircraft; after taking off, the planes returned empty.
On 12 March 2016, Interpol, through the National Police of Colombia, arrested Juan Carlos Francisco Bossi in the city of Medellín. Also known as El doctor, Bossi is credited with activating the death flights during the Dirty War and wanted by Argentine authorities for taking part in death flights and forced disappearances of over 30,000 people. After his arrest, Bossi confessed to the Colombian authorities of being responsible for the deaths of 6,000 individuals.
A five-year trial (nicknamed the "ESMA mega-trial" or "Death Flights trial") of 54 former Argentine officials accused of running death flights and other crimes against humanity () heard 830 witnesses and investigated the death of 789 victims. A verdict was reached on 29 November 2017: 29 defendants were sentenced to life in prison, six were acquitted, and the nineteen remaining defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from eight to 25 years.
One of the aircraft involved in the death flights, a Short SC.7 Skyvan, was located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2023. It is planned to return it to Argentina for display in the Memorial Museum (Former ESMA) in Buenos Aires.
Chile
Oregier Benavente, Augusto Pinochet's former personal helicopter pilot, has admitted that on numerous occasions he threw prisoners into the ocean or into the high peaks of the Andes.