An Argentine judge allows the crew of a grounded Venezuelan plane to take off

An Argentine judge investigating the Iranian and Venezuelan crew of a cargo plane that has been grounded in Buenos Aires since June on Monday authorized the departure of 12 of them, local media reported.

However, federal judge Federico Villena ordered seven of the 19 to be detained in Argentina, the reports said, including four Iranians and three Venezuelans.

According to the verdict, published by the press, the judge considered that there were still items of investigation relating to Iranian Gholamrez Ghasemi, who was described by Argentine intelligence as a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Guard, as well as three other Iranians and three Venezuelans.

The plane in question arrived in Argentina from Mexico on June 6 with 14 Venezuelans and five Iranians on board, before attempting to fly to Uruguay two days later, where it was refused entry.

Uruguay’s Interior Minister Luis Alberto Heber said his country had received a “formal warning from Paraguayan intelligence”.

The plane then returned to Argentina, where it has been grounded ever since.

The plane is owned by Emtrasur, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s Conviasa, which is under US Treasury Department sanctions. It was bought a year ago by Iranian airline Mahan Air, which the United States accuses of links to the Revolutionary Guards.

Iranian connections are sensitive to Argentina, which has issued arrest warrants for a number of former Iranian leaders over the 1994 attack on the Jewish center AMIA, which killed 85 and wounded about 300.

Ten days ago, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian asked the Argentine diplomatic representative in Tehran for an “immediate” lifting of the travel ban on the five Iranian crew members.

Before its trip to Argentina, the plane had been in Paraguay in May, from where it had brought a load of cigarettes to the Caribbean island of Aruba, according to the manifesto.