On: Venezuelan men sue aviation firms who flew them to notorious Salvadorian jail

July 26, 2026.

They were not extradited for trial. They were not transferred for questioning. They were not deported for processing. They were, according to this account, loaded onto private aircraft by private companies, under contract, and flown to a foreign prison whose very name is a synonym for terror. And now, the men sue the carriers. Let us examine the defense, for it will surely be mounted: that the companies merely provided a service, that they filed a flight plan and collected a fee, that the cargo manifest listed passengers and the law, at the time, permitted the flight. They will say they are transporters, not judges; they fly where they are paid to fly. To which I respond: the pilot who knowingly flies the conspirator to the meeting where the assassination is plotted is not a neutral chauffeur. He is part of the conspiracy. The law of the Republic - of any republic worthy of the name - demands that a man cannot be made to vanish from its soil without cause, without charge, without the fundamental right to know why and by whose authority he is seized. When a corporation accepts payment to become the instrument of that vanishing, it ceases to be a mere business. It becomes the logistical arm of tyranny.

How long shall we tolerate the fiction of the neutral contractor? The state, in outsourcing its most violent acts, seeks to wash its hands. The contractor, in pointing to the state’s authorization, seeks to wash his. And between these two washings, the Republic itself drowns. The case is not merely against the aviation firms. It is a prosecution of the principle that the machinery of justice - or of its grotesque imitation - can be rented like a cart and horse. If these men prevail, they will have done more than win compensation. They will have affirmed that every cog in the apparatus of injustice bears a share of the guilt, and that the law must reach those who built the wings for the descent into hell.