By Hans Vogel
On Tuesday, September 22, as he was getting ready to enter the cockpit of his Transavia plane to fly back from Valencia to Holland, Argentinian-Dutch pilot Julio Poch was arrested by Spanish police. The arrest was made upon the request of the Argentinian government. It wanted to put Poch on trial for his part in the brutal repression of dissenters and opponents of the military junta—led by General Jorge Videla—that came to power through a coup-d'etat in 1976.
According to his personal page on Linkedin, in 1988, a mere five years after the military junta was forced out of power by its pathetic mismanagement of the economy and the lost Malvinas/Falklands War against Britain, Poch joined Transavia as a pilot. Transavia must have been glad to hire this experienced pilot.
Flying Dutch-made Fokker aircraft, Poch had participated in the systematic liquidation of untold numbers of defenseless prisoners, who were brought on board drugged and handcuffed and then flown to the icy waters of the South Atlantic to be pushed out. It is estimated some 4.500 people were killed in this fashion.
Argentina is unique in prosecuting not only the junta members responsible for the savage violations of human rights and the torture and killing of thousands of fellow-citizens. It is also making efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators at the lower echelons. After all, according to the jurisprudence setting the framework for crimes against humanity—the Nuremberg trials—every individual also has a personal responsibility and cannot defend his actions by alleging these were ordered by superiors. If an order runs against universally accepted, elementary human rights, one has a higher duty not to obey it. If former SS men like Klaus Barbie and Erich Priebke could not hide behind the argument of having to carry out orders and neither will Julio Poch.
If Poch is tried and found guilty of the charges brought against him, he will follow several other former officers of lesser rank that have been put behind bars in Argentina.
So far some factual dimensions of the Poch case. Its wider significance and implications are interesting to say the least and also have a twist of irony.
First, it is noteworthy that Poch could come to the Netherlands, find a job there and even acquire Dutch citizenship, without anyone checking his professional history. As recently as 2004, the Dutch intelligence service ran a check but could not find anything against Poch. Thus, either this secret service is not worth its salt, or it is not telling the truth (not uncommon among this sort of services).
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