Avenger | 7. The Pilots

Hello, Avenger listeners, It's Steve Fishman and I'm really glad you've tuned in. I hope you love this show as much as we do. A quick word on an upcoming bonus episode. We're doing a bonus with Miriam, the real Miriam. We'll be asking her questions, your questions and getting answers. She'll update us on what's going on in her world and a lot has Please email your questions or thoughts or comments too. Info at Orbitmedia dot fm. Oh And Fisher Stevens can answer your questions too. He's our co

Thanks.

Before we begin, please note that for this story we interviewed medium and everyone else for dozens of hours in Spanish. We hired actors to voice their words in English. In Buenos Aires, there's a particular weather phenomenon, a storm called aasulistada. Cold southern winds mixed with ocean humidity to create powerful gusts, rain, and rough seas. In December of nineteen seventy seven, Asulhstada slams into the coast of Buenos Aires. Days after the storm,

The police. Magical examiner dem meant that the bodies that surfaced had vertical bone fractures. This happens when someone falls from a very high place.

That's Carlos Somiliana, who goes by Marco. He's a forensic expert you heard from in the last episode.

Since they couldn't identify the bodies, they buried them as an n that short for no menesco Latin for unknown name.

In nineteen seventy nine, two years after those bodies washed ashore, General Jorge Rafael Videla gives a rare press conference at the presidential Palace. Pope John Paul the Second had recently called out the number of disappeared in Argentina, and a brave reporter asks a sensitive question. What the reporter asked, is the government doing anything about the disappeared. General Videla is thrown.

He could not.

He tries to fill the awkward silence as he thinks of a response. He starts saying he's going to speak from a Christian pro human rights perspective, which didn't make much sense, and then he says the disappeared are just a mystery. They're neither dead nor alive. They're just disappeared.

Notty that no is that.

But it won't always stay that way. More will be known about those six unidentified bodies that washed up on shore. They'll become crucial evidence that will lead to the truth about one of the most horrific operations carried out by the Junta, the death flights. It's a gruesome discovery that will finally confirm what Medium and Giancarlo say. They've uncovered the names of those responsible from Orbit Media. I'm Andres Caaba Scheedo. This is a Venger. The story of Medium

I slowly warmed up to Carlos. It it took a while because I was still mourning the death of one the man I married before my kidnapping.

Before her release from prison, Medium had gotten confirmation that Juan had been killed. He was the love of her life. A fellow activist. They had gone underground together, living every moment like it was their last. For Medium, her relationship with Cardlos developed slowly but steadily. They had been thrown together by circumstance, two survivors who understood each other's trauma, and she knew he would be a good dad to Juan, which is the name she gave her baby.

Even with all the uncertainty about the future, I never doubted about not having the baby.

With Medium out of captivity and about to give birth, she and Godlos decide that the only way for them to live a normal life is to leave Argentina become exiles. Medium had family in New York City, so that was their best option.

But I couldn't leave the kind without government officials knowing about it.

Remember, she had been released but with certain conditions. So Medium and Cardlos follow protocol and ask for permission to leave the country.

I told them I was going to be a mother and that I wanted a new life far away from all the trauma I had experienced.

At first, it seems Medium and Carlos will leave without any issues, but then three esthma survivors who had recently been allowed to move to Europe had held a press conference. They accused the Junta of its brutal crimes. Suddenly, the processing of Mediums in Cardluss's passports is canceled.

We were frustrated. It was a reminder that we were still hostages.

Medium will have to give birth in Argentina.

My mom was still getting over her anger and shame because I wasn't married. I never thought I'd get pregnant in the first place, especially in such a new relationship, but still I was always sure I wanted to have the baby.

Medium carried the painful memory of her two best friends who were captured and killed by the Junta years earlier. They were also pregnant.

Having that baby was a way to honor life itself and my friends who were murdered before giving birth.

But many women did give birth well captive, they didn't get to keep their children. During the six years in power, the Junta stole roughly five hundred babies from their mothers, selling them or giving them to families cozy with the military. Medium knew that tragedy up close. One day, when Medium was still captive at ESMA, a pregnant woman came into the prison. Medium immediately recognized her. That was Patricia, her

The doctor had this stern look on his face before he cut the umbilical cord. I smiled at Patricia and asked about the name of the baby. She replied Rodolpho. Then the doctor congratulated her and took them away, mother and newborn. I never saw Patricia or the baby again. It never crossed my mind that they were stealing babies. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe people were capable of doing such a thing. Pregnant women were told their

Truth Abla el tal donjorhir Rafael Vivela.

By nineteen eighty one, an economic crisis is brewing and among the junta members there's a growing conflict. Some want to adopt a harder line, others want democracy. In the middle of this, the junta follows through with a plan for Videla to step down. During a televised speech, General Vivela relinquishes power to another junta leader. While this is happening, Medium and her family's passports are finally issued. They're free to go into exile, away from the fear, the paranoia.

And we finally landed in New York City. We moved into the second floor of a two family house in Flushing, Queens. It was close to a botanical garden in an immigrant neighborhood, mostly Latinos, but also a lot of people from India China. Our place was big, a lot of light came in. The walls were covered in beige wallpaper with a little square powder, and downstairs from us lived a Filipino family.

Medium's aunt also lives in New York, so she has family there and they spend most of their time working a lot to pay the bills and support their new baby. Life wasn't easy. Godless gets a van and delivers newspapers.

Carlos didn't really want to be there. He found it hard to adapt. He didn't want to learn English either. He'd get up at four am and when he was done, we would have breakfast. I'd drop my baby off with a babysitter and head straight to work.

Medium works as a paralegal at an immigration law firm.

We still lived in fear. Every time someone asked me about my past, I'd look around, paranoid I'd be kidnapped again at any moment.

She's also careful who she shares her past with.

It was normal for many survivors to be accused of being traitors by friends or family members of the disappeared. If you were a man like Carlos, you would be accused of giving away information that led others to getting captured. And if you are a woman, you likely survived because you slept with your captors and because you gave away information.

With that stigma comes guilt, a.

Lot of guilt. Because we survived. Many times I burst into tears and asked myself, why didn't I manage to swallow that pill. Why why am I not dead right now? It was unbearable. I mean, it's the early eighties. D Arunta was still in power in Argentina. At that time, no one dreamed of a trial against the arunta still Carlos and I never doubted that sounding the alarm about what was happening was the right thing to do.

Medium connects with the human rights lawyer.

The lawyer would call me from Washington, d C. To ask questions, and I would write down my experiences and mail the documents to their office.

Going public is a necessary step for Medium for her own sanity, but it's not easy.

After all those years of being held captive, I became hypervigilant that feeling that I was being surveilled, especially when I started collaborating with the human rights groups, telling them everything I knew.

Meanwhile, in Argentina, foreign debt and record inflation are pushing the country closer to financial collapse. The Junta's desperate and creates a distraction. It starts a war against England. They call on patriotism, nationalistic pride, and many butt into this cul to unity.

Siege and benitheveng and represent Vataza.

In nineteen eighty two, the dictatorship orders its troops to invade the Malvinas, also known as the Falkland Islands, off Argentina's southern coast. They had long been disputed and occupied by the British.

It was a risky and ridiculous move by the junta, but.

It works in a way. The Calton nationalism is powerful. People rally behind the junta. Medium even notices it.

In New York.

I saw how a lot of anti junta activists were so invested in this war that they got into a feastfight with an Englishman on Fifth Avenue.

Argentina has seized the British Falkland Islands, whose ownership she's been disputing with Britain for two centuries. Britain has suffered its first major losses in the Falklands inflict the Ministry of Defense.

But the tide turns in Britain ramps up its assault. The war lasts seventy four days. There's more than six hundred dead Argentines and thousands of wounded soldiers. The military junta surrenders.

As were of the Argentine defeat, leaked out in winners Iris. Thousands of demonstrators began to gather outside the presidential palace. Will the junta lasts and if so, for how long?

The dictatorship falls? And after six years democracy returns to Argentina.

The war was just a desperate move by the junta to stay in power. They once actually used the World Cup, which helped them, but this war meant the end of the dictatorship.

People are ecstatic, hopeful. The newly elected president, Raoul al Fonsine promises freedom, peace. He waves from a balcony as tens of thousands of people cheer below in the main square, Confetti flying everywhere outside of Argentina. More survivors in exile are denouncing the junta and its crimes. Medium and Carlos are called to testify at the Argentine consulate in New York.

And really, that was the first time I even imagined the possibility that survivors like us would ever find justice and that we would become such key players in the trials against the junta.

It's been three years since Medium in Carlos left Argentina. Now they start talking about going back.

We wanted to raise our kids in our own country, a free country. Life in New York was complicated at one point. We were offered to be part of a housing program and buy an apartment in the city, but Carlos didn't want to get involved. He thought it was too much of a commitment. I didn't mind it. My aunt wanted me to stay. I was still young and I had a green card, so I could stay and go to college.

Gordless prevails. In nineteen eighty four, Medium and her family board a flight to Buenos Aires.

Exile is like having a hole in your soul. I was happy to go back, hopeful about the future, these trials that were in the making. I knew that I could potentially be a part of something important, a new process that could transform the country.

Medium's excitement about the future about this new free Argentina doesn't last long. As she steps off the plane with her kids, she sees two men in uniform at the egg. They're staring right at her.

As soon as I made eye contact with them saw who they were, I started to panic.

These men had been in the torture room with Medium years earlier, the day she was kidnapped.

I tell Carlos who those men were. I thought they'd been sent to kidnap me again. So my instinct was to turn around and walk back onto the plane.

But the men weren't there to kidnap her. They were working as security now employed by the airport.

When they recognized me, they also started panicking. I think they thought I was going to accuse them of kidnapping and torture, right there in front of everyone.

But as she walks past them, she keeps quiet, and so do they.

Not only were they free, they were security guards, and they were carrying out their lives as if nothing had ever happened.

The dictatorship has foun democracy has returned, but these men are free, living with impunity, working as airport police.

Sea do wios antecedent and then moved.

Not long after Medium returns to Buenos Aires, President Alfonsine announces that a trial will begin to prosecute the military leaders, the Trial of the Juntas. It's the first of its kind, not just for Argentina but for all of Latin America. The first time military leaders will be held responsible for human rights abuses. Some see it as the most significant since the Nuremberg trials. The commanders refuse to recognize the trial as legitimate. Some elected officials dismiss it as retaliation

The cougom opinion termina racons in quendanio de froutracion democratica.

In the.

An estelevised speech, the president promises the trial will help heal the country.

I started getting recruited to testify in all sorts of cases. My mother was horrified by the idea. It was scary there could be retaliation. Many of my comrades didn't feel safe. Some came back from exile to testify and then immediately left the country.

The prosecutors tell medium to avoid her home during the days before and after the trial. She could be a target, and so could they.

It was my duty to testify, also my chance to address that guilt for having survived, to avenge the torture, the murder of my friends, of all the victims of the.

Junta quioi alas members dilatares de jamalo pro.

It's nineteen eighty five and the trial begins. The court has high ceilings, wood paneled walls, and it's packed with journalists, relatives of the disappeared and activists fill the balcony. Medium sits in front of the judge ready to testify. She's wearing a black blazer, her reddish brown hair at shoulder length, and sitting in the road. Just behind her are the nine Junta commanders on trial, most of them still in uniform.

The whole scene was intimidating, nine of the commanders and their defense attorneys looking right at you.

The trial is public, which means anyone can attend, but it's not broadcast live on TV. Only minutes of each hearing were broadcast. Some say because of pressure intimidation by the military in different sectors of society. Others going to the media still being fearful of upsetting the military. And then there's Medium, the Avenger, confident, fearless. That's the real Medium,

At that moment, I was so calm and collected, I could have eaten a slice of pizza and testified.

At the same time, she talks about the prisoners she met in captivity and names her captors, among them Alfredo Astis, the blond angel of Death. She also mentions Admiral Maceda, who ran Esma now the ten Defender. The junta commanders refused to admit guilt. They called the trial unconstitutional. They deny that clandestine torture centers existed and say they had never met any of the survivors testifying against them. But

I told the judge, here's the napkin for the court to see. I found it inside one of my notebooks from nineteen seventy nine.

The judge tells Medium to hand over the napkin to one of the clerks. That napkin becomes crucial evidence. It proves that the junta leaders are lying about not knowing the prisoners, there's no way to deny it.

Emilio Elmira, Raa, Gualo Rossi and Delitos.

The trial lasts several months. Hundreds of witnesses testify. Finally, Chief Prosecutor Julio Cesar Strasera delivers his closing argument. It will go down in Argentine history. He says, quote, I want to use a phrase that doesn't belong to me, because it now belongs to the Argentine people. Never again a Totalino, Senor quess. People are chanting and crying, shouting things like murders at the commanders. General Videla stands up

In the years that followed, the new president came under a lot of pressure from the military. They were still very powerful. The government felt pressure to pass new amnesty laws. Those laws brought twenty more years of impunity.

Exactly one year after the trial, the so called full Stop law interrupts all new or ongoing trials related to the junta's crimes. Impunity becomes the watchword. Soon after the Due Obedience Law takes effect. It exempted lower military members from charges because they were quote just following orders. Those who kidnapped medium, those who tortured her were free.

The survivors we'd continue to come across our kidnappers torturers on the street, at a stoplight, at the movie theater, wherever we felt helpless, because it showed that these trials had brought no real punishment, no real justice.

Fast forward two decades. In December of two thousand and four, Mako, the guy from the forensic team, gets a tip about a mass grave where the remains of people who had disappeared may be buried.

This information led us to a cemetery where we found six bodies buried in a mass grave. They were all unidentified.

They were the same bodies that had been discovered on the beach two decades earlier, in nineteen seventy seven. The bodies described by witnesses as swollen severed, the medical examiners could tell that the storm that powerful Sudhestalla had driven the bodies to shore. But then they made a surprising discovery. The victims didn't die from drowning. They died from impact from falling from a high altitude. These were, without a doubt, bodies of the disappeared who had been tossed from death

Giancarlo had been documenting Maco's work, so he had direct access to him and there was trust. As soon as they finished analyzing more than two thousand logs, Maco tells Giancarlo to come to his office. He has something to share with him. At his office, Maco asks Giancarlo if he's familiar with El Grupo de la Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz church group.

Giancarlo knew all about them. I had just read a book about them. There are a group of mothers who disappeared, along with two nuns kidnapped by the Junta. The mothers who attended the church group were also part of the relentless and legendary Madres de Plasa de Macho, which formed a year after the coup and marched in silent protests around the Plaza de Macho in Buenos Aires, near the presidential Palace. They demanded information about the fate of their disappeared.

They had all been kidnapped, betrayed by Alfredo Astis, the Blonde Angel.

The guy who wrote his phone number on medium snapkin.

That one day, Astis had infiltrated this group of mothers and nuns while they were raising money to publicize the names of their missing sons and daughters. They wanted to pressure the government to do something.

Aste posed as a brother of a disappeared and gained their trust. The day of the fundraiser, he marked the leaders of the group, tagging them by kissing them on the cheek as his fellow undercover officers washed from a distance.

Then they kidnapped the mothers and the nuns.

The junta almost got away with it, but the nuns were not Argentine.

So when the rest of the world found out there were two French nationals missing, things got heeded and the French government got directly involved.

Iused the Rigius francaise.

A misance was on this set ris Eltigre. Acosta came up with an idea to try and defuse the attention. He had the nuns take a picture with the flag used by the Monteneos, holding a newspaper with the current date showing it.

Was a fake photo. Acosta sent it to the press. The photo made it seem like the nuns were kidnapped by the Gorilla group, and this is key. The date on the newspaper visible in the photo read December fourteenth, nineteen seventy seven. This date was the missing link. Maco tracked to one of the flight lugs.

We found a very regular and suspicious flight. It flew at night on December fourteenth, nineteen seventy seven, the same date they took the picture of the nuns, and all the other information we had gathered through the years checked with this. The storm pushed the bodies to shore two days after the flight. The bodies they recovered were all women.

All of this is extremely rare. Only around two percent of the bodies suspected to have been killed via death flights had been found. It's a huge discovery. These bodies had been passengers of the plane that Medium and Giancarlo tracked down in Florida, the sky Ven. It was Medium in gih Caado's investigation that provided documented proof of the death flights.

What really surprised me was the fact that this plane, the one we had found, was the one that was actually used for these particular killings.

And now something else was clear. The lugs that Medium and Gihcado had discovered, they contained the names of the pilots who flew the flights that killed the mothers and the nuns, and that would prove crucial to finally getting justice.

In the next episode, two of these pilots were still flying for irolinas agentinas the other had retired. If they don't act soon, these pilots will never be arrested.

From Orbit Media. This is Avenger, the story of Medium Lewin I'm Your Host and seior producer andres Caaachedo. The series was produced by Seguielrodries and and edited by Monica Campbell. Original score Nicolas Paschela, mixing and mastering Christopher Hoff and Austin Smith. Assistant producers Andres Feschtenholz and Eleanna Gillespie. FactCheck Alejandro Marinelli and leonardos Canani. Legal review Neil Rossini. Casting

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