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
founder and resident Oscar winner. He's an actor you saw him in Succession and director of actors like al Pacino and Justin Timberlake. For Avenger, he directed Alexis Bledel, who voices Miriam. If We're lucky, Alexis who was the star of Gilmore Girls and Handmaid's Tale and is the daughter of an Argentine. We'll chip in answers to so let us know your thoughts and questions, hopes and prayers. Info
at Orbitmedia dot FM. Thanks. In this episode, justice happens finally, but a question remains, one that brings Miriam to the edge. Why did I survive or answer will move you. A quick word about subscriptions. If you love ads, listen on. If you're not so keen on ads, sign up for True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. That's our subscription channel. You'll get no ads, and also you can binge the entire Avengers series. It's just two ninety nine a month.
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. It's twenty eleven, almost three decades since Medium's released from prison, since the fall of the dictatorship and Argentina's returned to democracy. By now, a judge has attached the investigation against the
three pilots to the Big SMA case. It's gearing up to be the biggest human rights trial in the country's history. Months before the trial begins, a prosecutor investigating the Death Flights makes a surprise announcement.
He said they had identified the pilots of the death Flights, who flew the Santa Cruz church group in December nineteen seventy seven.
He doesn't release any names, but once it's in the news, the pilots will know it's them. Medium is confused. Why should the prosecutor do this before the pilots were arrested. It doesn't make sense.
Was he trying to give the pilots a chance to leave the country.
But things get even weirder.
Mario Danielle Arub He was sixty two. He had been flying for the National Airline. This pilot went to the judge's office and turned himself.
In instead of arresting him, the judge confirms he's being accused of flying a death flight in December nineteen seventy seven, of piloting the sky van that Medium and Giancarlo had found in Florida.
So the judge tells the pilot not to worry that he could go home, that someone would contact him soon. I mean, what the risk of the pilot's fleeing vanishing? It kept me up all night.
Several weeks later, Medium wakes up, makes coffee, and then she hears breaking news coming from the radiotoria.
Finally, the judge ordered the arrest of the three pilots involved in the flight that killed the Santa Cruz church group. Among them were the two French nuns and the mothers who were looking for their disappeared.
From Orbit media. I'm andres caaba schedo. This is Avenger the story of Medium Lewin Episode eight.
Justice.
When it comes to putting the top generals, the junta leaders in prison for life, the path was hardly a straight line.
After the amnesty laws went into effect. There were trials that tried to expose the truth, but the accused were able to admit they had kidnapped and tortured people, and then they were just able to return to their homes and their everyday lives with zero consequences.
Remember, the laws passed by the democratically elected government gave amnesty to anyone who claimed to be just following orders. The human rights trials against military officials were halted by those laws. Then, in two thousand and five, two years before Medium and Gen Carlo started their investigation, the Supreme Court finally declares the amnesty laws unconstitutional. Now the trials are back on, more people are speaking up, more evidence
is emerging. The Junta leaders, once spared prison sentences, are vulnerable again.
The Supreme Court annulled the amnesty, opening the door for Videla to be sentenced again. On thirty one, New counts of torture and murder.
Jorge Rafaele Videla, who orchestrated the military court the.
Highlight of a week of convictions against violators of human rights and life sentence for eighty five year old for her Rafaele Videla.
In twenty twelve, a year after being convicted for torture and murder, Videla is facing a new trial.
Activists were gathered outside the court in a nearby square. A television link had been set up to beam the court proceedings to the hundreds of people who had assembled outside.
The charges were horrific. During its rule, the junta stole roughly five hundred babies from their mothers and then sold those babies or give them to military families deemed politically acceptable. Prosecutors believed the baby stealing was so widespread that there was no way the orders weren't coming from the top. They charged Videla with masterminding it all.
Vidella has repeatedly justified his regime's brutal tactics.
Videla's defense, yes, babies were confiscated, but he had nothing to do with it. It wasn't some sort of grand government plan. Apparently he wanted people to believe it was some sort of freelance project by military underlings. The jury disagreed. Videla was found guilty and got another fifty years in prison. Less than a year later, he was found dead in his cell, sitting on a toilet. He had reportedly fallen and never got medical attention.
There are still some eight hundred other alleged rights violators awaiting trial, and given their advanced age and the lately legal process, they may never face Justice.
Alfredo Ignacio Attis, Antonio Perniaz.
It's over twenty eleven. Alfredostis, known as the Blonde Angel of death sits in a packed courtroom. It's sentencing day. Once Astes used his angelic face to infiltrate a group of mothers of the disappeared. He had kissed those he wanted kidnapped. Then they were taken to a clandestine center and put on death flights. He no longer has that baby face. Now he looks disgruntled. His hair's combed to the side, and he's wearing a dark gray suit with
a black tie. A few rows behind him, a glass wall has been installed to separate defendants like Astees from the justice hungry relatives of the disappeared watching everything unfold.
I sat just feet away from Astise. At one point he looked right at me with resentment, as if I owed him some sort of loyalty. It was absurd, as if he were telling me, how could you?
Astis had really believed Medium was an ally twenty years earlier, when Medium was still under Junta control. He had written his contact information on a napkin in case she needed anything after she was released from prison. The same napkin Medium had produced in the nineteen eighty five Junta trial to implicate Astis.
In the Ciencia Parsial del Suez. Doctor Ricardo Louis Fardiez.
Two rows in front of Astis is Jorge Eltira Costa, the guy who used to say that Jesus sat on his shoulder every night and told him who to put on the death flights. Medium knew him well. He had taken her and her parents.
To dinner Bigamoo Condo Ajorge.
The families and activists were anxiously waiting, so were the people who couldn't get in, watching live through a big screen outside the court. Gian Carlo was also there, taking pictures, but we barely saw each other. There were so many people.
A Coostaynastis were sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity. In the years to come, these commanders would be tried and sentenced over and over again. But the biggest human rights case in Argentina's history is still in the making.
The trial over what happened at the Navy Mechanical School is the largest ever human rights trial in Argentina. It will be a long process, but one many are hoping will bring closure to a painful chapter of Argentine history.
This trial marked the first time that Argentina's justice system acknowledged that the death flights were a systematic plan to kill thousands of dissidents, a state sanctioned assassination program. The pilots were in the spotlight, especially those who flew the planes that killed the mothers and the nuns, the victims
chosen from the crowd by asties. They'd been loaded on a death flight in December nineteen seventy seven, a sky van, the same plane that Medium and Giancarlo had tracked down in Florida, with the flight lugs and the pilot's names. Pilots who for thirty years after flying death machines had filtered back into civilian life, leading normal lives as if nothing had happened. At the time of the trial, two of these pilots were flying regularly to Europe for Atlinias Argentinas,
the country's national airline. One of them was rue.
That Arula's name. I heard it before.
Whenever Giangadlo went to Rome, he would fly with Arolinias Argentinas.
The thing is that in this flight they tend to say the names of the pilots, and the Arula's name stuck with me because it was a Sardo last name from Sardinia, Italy. So when we looked at the list of pilots from the sky, then I immediately recognized the name. It was the same Arou I had actually flown with a death flight.
Pilot. Eru and Saint George had asked to leave the military around nineteen seventy eight, but not all of the pilots did. One pilot, Alejandro Domingo de Agustino, stayed and eventually ran airplane maintenance.
Seventeen days after the flight where the nuns and the activists were killed, a military superior wrote a letter praising the Agustina for his ability to follow instructions, his ability to be level headed.
Just how deeply they were involved in the death flights would determine their punishment. The pilots claimed they only flew the planes and didn't know about the executions happening a few feet away from the cockpit, while Enrique Mirinto, the aviation expert who had helped Medium and gian Carlo understand what happened, told the jury no way. The pilots had to be an intimate part of the death machine.
Inside the plane, a person must be assigned as a flight technician of sorts. This would have been the actual person operating the latches. Those latches enabled the cargo doors to be opened during flight, but for this to happen, that technician has to inform the pilot about it so that it's done safely.
A pilot must know what's happening inside the plane at all times, from the number of passengers to how much cargoes on board. Weight is an important safety consideration, So when the pilot hears that a technician wants to open the hatch mid flight, he has to ask. He has to know what's happening. There is no chance they're not aware. No possible way. Begnetto's testimony is strong, convincing, but was
it enough to build a solid case. In twenty twelve, Medium finds herself in a unique position, a journalist whose investigation led to this trial and is also a witness to what happened at the Esthma clandestine center.
I have to be ready to talk with lawyers and public defenders, and then I have to testify over and over again, which as long as I'm alive, it's my responsibility.
At this point, a new prosecutor comes into the picture. Mercedes Sosa Riley has the big task of consolidating all of the survivor's testimonies people at ESMA with the evidence from Medium and gian Carlo's investigation.
Ila pruea mediam al huisio foe absolute am.
That's Mercedes. She's explaining how the evidence Medium brought to the case is incredibly revealing. The flight logs are the missing link we needed to solve the case, she says, the names of the pilots, signs of abnormal flights, and details about the flight that killed the church group.
Yes a la Santa Gruz.
Once all the claims, testimonies and evidence are compiled, Mercedes is ready to present a case where the whole isthma structure would, for the first time in history, be on trial. The kidnappers, the infiltrators, the torturers, the pilots, any superior who gave them orders, all would now face.
Justice Buenodiyas by Mosaicio.
Finally, on November twenty eight, twenty twelve, the trial begins.
And there they were, sitting side by side, sixty eight people accused, a chain that started with us tie and ended with the Pilots Ru, the Saint George and the Agustino, and went straight to Altigre Acosta. Every single one of those sixty eight had done their part to complete this horrifying mission successfully.
Pedro Santa Maria Antonio Anyek.
Inside the courtroom, the glass wall divides the accused from the crowd, including relatives of the victims. The accused sit with their defenders in a row just feet away. The three judges take the bench. One speaks into a thin black microphone and starts the proceedings, and Rigapinto sits among the crowd quietly in a corner. He had been instrumental in validating Medium and Gian Carlo's findings, but today. He just wants to be there and Seattle.
As soon as the judges entered the room, I got a feeling that this could really lead to something good.
The hearings go on for months. Then it's Medium's turn to testify. She sits near the prosecutors and the judges. The lawyers of the pilots are there, but the pilots themselves watch from a screen inside prison. They'd been given the choice whether or not to be there.
It was such a shame. I would have loved to see their faces, but the pilots were following everything from prison.
Medium walks up to the stand, sits down and begins telling her story. Is Timonio the Medium?
Yes.
Mercedes says that Medium's account her investigation were essential to the larger argument to bring those who took part in the death flights to justice. The hearings go on for another two years. The prosecutor has nearly eight hundred testimonies against the sixty eight accused, including the three pilots. By then many were elderly. Fourteen died of natural causes during those two years, so now there are only fifty four
defendants left. At the end, the prosecution demanded life sentences for all the accused.
The Saint George died mid trial, so that day only two of the three identified pilots were there, Aru and di Agostino.
In November twenty seventeen, the judges finally hand down sentences for the pilots, along with others who participated in the flights and the asthma operations.
Dozens of people gathered outside this court house in Buenos Aires to hear the sentences against fifty four former members of security forces, among them Alfredo Atis, known as the Angel of Death, who infiltrated human rights and had some of their members killed.
The sentencing could legitimize all the work Giancarlo and I put into the investigation. The press was spreading rumors that the pilots wouldn't be convicted, that there wasn't enough evidence.
Tura alberedicto filmato oral.
In court, everyone is in place, witnesses, lawyers, prosecutors behind them in the glass wall, medium and the relatives of the victims holding pictures of the disappeared. The defendants are huddled together on one side of the room. Many are well past their seventies. Alfredostie, the blonde angel, more like a gray haired Angel now is sitting wearing a suit with an Argentine flagpen. He looks pensive. To his right is Altigra Costa. He looks skinny, tired. He's wearing glasses
in a blue zipped up jacket. To Astis's left is Mario Ru, one of the Skyban pilots. He's wearing jeans at tucked in shirt. He leans back in his chair with his arms crossed, as if he were watching a play. The judge sentences Ru to life in prison for the death of the nuns and the mothers, and his face changes completely. He looks surprised, tense, angry. He shakes his head in denial, covers his mouth with his left hand. The judge continues, ordering a life sentence for the other
living pilot, Alejandro Domingo di Austina. Finally, Astis in Acosta, the blonde Angel, and Altigre Medium's captors were given additional life sentences. Are Astis. He denied wrongdoing until the very end was important. In one of his previous closing statements, he said, quote, I will never apologize for defending my country end quote. A decade had passed since Medium met giancadlo at that cafe for the first time when she
found him bizarre, impudent, but also charming. A decade since their first dinners and shared cigarettes, and since Giancarlo convinced Medium that this was a story worth pursuing. Now they finally helped bring the pilots of the Death Flights and some of Argentina's most powerful Junta members to justice.
I was sad when the sentencing began. Giancarlo couldn't make it. He was in Havana for world But when they read the sentencing, I was sitting next to the daughters of some of the mothers that had been killed on the sky van, and being around them in that moment it felt special. It was like some form of healing.
I remember Miriam calling me the day of the sentencing. She was ecstatic, she was yelling, And after that I went on a long walk. I had decided to be here instead of in the court. I didn't want to take pictures of caged animals, so to speak. I felt happy about the sentence, of course, but I also felt happy about my decision to take it all in from Afar alone.
Forty five years have passed since Medium was held captive inside ESMA the Mechanics school. It's spring twenty twenty one and Medium is invited to ESMA to receive an award along with other survivors. Now this former clandestine torture site is a place of remembrance, transformed into a museum. The hope is that Argentina never forgets this horrific history and what went on inside those walls.
That idea sits well with me.
The Esthma now opens its doors to cultural events, music shows, and they've purposely left the holding cells and the facilities intact the way they looked during the dictatorship.
I always get a very particular horrible energy here. You can feel it.
She walks past the place where officers would spend time. She sees the torture rooms, the cells, in the room where most new prisoners slept on old mattresses, no ventilation.
The walls are dilapidated. Can smell the humidity.
Last year I drove by Esthma. It was my first time seeing it as an adult. I was in a cab to visit the house where I grew up, where my grandfather told me at age nine, how people had been thrown from planes into the sea. I'd been reading a lot about Medium's survival. I looked at the front of the building, at stately white pillars. I could almost hear the screams coming through the walls of the torture
chambers echoing through the hallways. I felt shame, anger, sadness, confusion about how humans were capable of doing such things in the name of law and order, and how an entire country blindly celebrated a World Cup while Medium and thousands of others Abaracidos suffered from a mile away massa. While researching the Dictatorship, I went through hours of archival footage, dozens of speeches by General Videla talking about his religious
nationalist reorganization process, which he used to justify murder. During that research, I also came across a ton of comments from regular people Argentines responding to those old videos, praising this brutal dictator. Hail to my General Videla. Some would say the country needs you, or what a shame there isn't another Videla in twenty twenty one. Thank you General. The dictatorship ended four decades ago, but who can guarantee
that this won't happen again. Medium witnessed the decay of Argentina's democracy, her survival, her determination to avenge the crimes, show me that there can be a path to some form of justice. In twenty seventeen, Medium flew to Milan for the lunch of gian Carlo's book.
One afternoon, on the way back to Rome, we stopped at a small, medieval looking town. We walked around the main square, visited a small church, and then we sat somewhere to watch the sunset.
I asked her if she remembered the conversation we had at the bar at the beginning of our investigation about the captivity that horrible time. She started crying and asked me why am I alive?
I should have died.
She couldn't stop crying. It was her guilt for surviving. For me, it was my job I had this natural distance, But for her it was much more than that. It was about finding a reason that justified her being alive.
Today, Medium stays quiet thinking. She reminds him how during that first meeting she thought he was so rude with these intrusive questions.
Without Giancarlo, we would have never started the investigation in the first place.
Today, Medium continues testifying in human rights cases in Argentina. She's also still investigating crimes committed by the dictatorship.
It's my responsibility. This is how things played out for me. If they had killed me, there would have been no witness to help put these criminals in prison. Later, Sometimes, when guilt starts taking hold of me, I still ask myself, why did I survive. I'll probably never find out why, but if I had to answer, I'd say it was to bring at least some of those pilots of the death flights to justice. I was able to help ensure that these pilots wouldn't die with impunity, and that alone gives me peace.
Nearly fifty years have passed since Argentina's military cup. The Argentine junta never kept records of the people they targeted or murdered, which makes it difficult to quantify the number of disappeared without running the risk of leaving many people out. Today, there are still disappearances that haven't even been reported. Some human rights groups and media sources estimate that the disappeared
polarizing topic. What we do know are the countless stories and testimonies from witnesses and survivors that the killings were systematic and they impacted an entire country. More than one thousand people have been sentenced for Junta related crimes. Mario Danila Rue, the first convey to pilot, died under house arrest in twenty twenty two. Alejandro Domingo di Agustino is
still serving his sentence, also under house arrest. Alol Fosilingo, the guy who confessed about his role in the death flights, was sentenced while in Spain to more than a thousand years in prison. Navy Admiral Emilia Massera, the top boss overseeing ESMA, whom Medium had been forced to work for, was considered too ill and see now to be prosecuted for his crimes. He died in twenty ten and was buried quickly and in secret to avoid protests from Orbit media.
This is Avenger, the story of Medium Lewin. I'm your host and senior producer Andresca Acheedo. The series was produced by Essequielrodrie Sandino and edited by Monica Campbell. Original score Nicolas Pachella, mixing in mastering Christopher Hoff and Austin Smith. Assistant producers Andres Feschtenholz and Eleana Gillespi. FactCheck Alejandro Marinelli and leonardos Canone Legal review, Neil Rossini, casting director Paula Gammon Wilson. The executive producers from Orbit Media are Steve
Fishman Fisher, Stevens, Marci Wiseman, and Katie Springer. The voice actors in Avenger include Alexis Blodel as Medium, Lewin Fulvio de la Volta as Giancarlo Serraudo, Gonzalo Vargas as Enrique Pinedo, Edgardo Manono Castro as Bruno Vain, and Tom Schubert as Carlos, Marco, Somiliana and Gustavo. This podcast was produced in association with Sonoto. The Sonodo executive producers are Camilla Victoriano, Joshua Weinstein, and
Jasmine Romeo. The rest of the Sonodo production team includes Senior producer Carmen Grattol, editor Rodrigo Crespo, Producer Paloma Navarro, Nicoletti, Evelyn Uribe, Mariana Corono, el Sara Mota, Manuel Barra, Hannah Bottom and Tasha Sandoval. Special thanks to Radio and Casa and Pomerak Recording Studios in Buenos Aires, and to Medium Lewin and Giancarlo Siraudo for letting us tell their story. Thank you for listening.
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