How a Pinochet 'death flight' helicopter became UK gamepark prop

[Judi Lynn]

Chilean helicopter H-255 in an airsoft park in the UK. Photograph: Dogtag Airsoft

Families of the disappeared express revulsion over aircraft where relatives lived their last moments being used for recreation and call for it to be returned to Chile

Charis McGowan in Rocas Santo Domingo
Fri 4 Aug 2023 07.00 EDT

Ana Becerra Arce stands in a clearing at the site of a former detention and death camp in central Chile where she was held prisoner in 1975.

“This was where the helicopters took off,” she says, pointing to the outlines of a now-overgrown landing pad. The spot – remote but just meters from the sands of Santo Domingo beach – was ideal for General Augusto Pinochet’s secret police to discreetly board prisoners on to their fleet of Puma helicopters before flying out over the sea, and casting them – still alive – into the water.

Such “death flights” were part of a campaign to forcibly disappear political dissidents, carried by military dictatorships in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile in the 1970s and 1980s. Officers would often drug or beat victims before throwing from aircraft into lakes, rivers and seas.

But attempts to bring a prosecution for Chile’s very first such flight foundered as investigators never had access to a key piece of evidence: the helicopter involved was sold by the military in 2003 and shipped to the UK.

Today, its rusting fuselage currently sits in the pine forests of Horsham, Sussex, where, in a bizarre and gruesome twist, it now serves as a prop in an airsoft park.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/04/chile-pinochet-death-flights-helicopter-uk-park