Dutch researchers have uncovered a document which shows ministers were placed under major pressure by Argentina to deport a pilot they suspected of being involved in death flights during the Junta era, current affairs show Nieuwsuur said on Tuesday evening.

The document goes into great detail about meetings between the justice and foreign affairs ministries with the Argentine ambassador three weeks before Julio Poch was arrested in Spain.

Poch was arrested in September 2009 while about to make his final flight for Transavia, where he had worked since 2003.  There is no extradition treaty between the Netherlands and Argentina and the Dutch authorities had tipped off both Spain and Argentina as to his whereabouts prior to his arrest.

Last month, justice minister Ferd Grapperhaus told MPs that the idea to tell Argentina Poch would be flying to Spain came from a public prosecution department worker who had been ‘explicit about the option of arresting Mr Poch in a third country’.

Poch was held in custody for eight years prior to the trial taking place. He has always denied involvement in death flights, in which opponents of the junta (1976-1983) were drugged and thrown from planes.

Legal action

At the end of 2017 he was found not guilty by a court in Argentina due to a lack of evidence. He is now holding the Dutch state responsible for damages and has launched legal action.

The Dutch state had consistently said it was not involved in the extradition proceedings. Poch is alleged to have told several Transavia pilots about the death flights, saying ‘we threw them from planes’. Those claims were the basis for his arrest and deportation.

The ministries told Nieuwsuur that the document is an internal civil service report and not the sort of file which is shared with parliament.

The document has been sent to the special commission now investigating the circumstances of Poch’s arrest, the justice ministry said.