Mysterious Venezuelan round-trip "terror flight" to Iran canceled
Flight IR744 — a round-trip flight from Caracas to Tehran with a stop in Damascus — was listed as a regular flight, there was no way that anyone could buy a ticket and travel without being vetted by the Venezuelan or Iranian government; Western intelligence service suspected the flight was used to carry illicit weapons materials to Iran, while bringing Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian operatives to the Western Hemisphere to prepare for a retaliatory strike against the United States if there was an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities;
Boeing's B747 SP, the aircraft used for flight IR744 // Source: dickwalterauto.com
A Venezuelan airline’s “mystery” flight that shuttled among the capitals of three of the world’s most terror-friendly nations — Venezuela, Syria, and Iran — has abruptly canceled its regularly scheduled departures amid accusations that it was used primarily to transport spies, terrorists and lethal cargo among the pariah counties, according to an exclusive FOX News report.
“I am sorry, but we are no longer flying to Tehran and I do not know when the flights will resume. It was a flight that left Caracas on Tuesdays, but it no longer does,” Jenny Gil Romero, who handles international departures for Conviasa, the national airline that operates the flight, said in a message to FOX News.
Intelligence analysts with both the CIA and Israel said that, despite the listing of the flight as a regular commercial route and a code share with Iran Air — Flight IR744 is also Flight VO3744 — there was no way that anyone could buy a ticket and travel without being vetted by the Venezuelan or Iranian government. Without passport controls, flight manifests and other documents, it meant some of the world’s most dangerous men could travel without fear of being uncovered (“Iran gearing up for a post-attack retaliatory campaign in Western Hemisphere,” 19 August 2010 HSNW).
In the exclusive FOX News story, Ed Barnes reports that, curiously, unlike most other bookings on the national airline, calls for reservations on this particular flight were routed to a cell phone in Argentina, rather than to Conviasa’s regular service in Caracas.
Barnes writes that for the past three years, every other Tuesday, Flight VO3744 would roll out to a secluded loading platform at Simon Bolivar Airport in Caracas. Shrouded from public view and unencumbered by the normal exit procedures, a select passenger list would board the flight.
According to Western intelligence agencies, Venezuelan opposition figures, and a former Iran-based spy for the CIA, the flight would carry illicit, lethal cargoes — such as explosives and possibly radioactive materials — and provide safe passage to terrorists, spies, weapons experts, senior Iranian intelligence operatives, and members of both Hezbollah and Hamas.
Intelligence agencies are known to suspect the flight may be part of ran’s program to build nuclear weapons. Venezuela has large deposits of uranium, and — while raw uranium transport is unlikely by plane — an Internet page in Caracas used by airline employees stated that the flights carried “radioactive materials.” The page was quickly shut down after the allegation was made, according to El Pais, a newspaper in Madrid, Spain.
Barnes notes that experts and Venezuelan opposition figures also say the influx of Iranians, as well as Hezbollah and Hamas operatives, into Venezuela on the flight was to prepare for a retaliatory strike against the United States if there was an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Another curiosity: the mysterious flight was the flight to which Abdul Kadir, the Guyanese member of Parliament who was convicted in the attempted bombing of fuel pipelines at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, was headed when he was arrested. Kadir was accused at his trial of being an Iranian spy.
