Enrique Pineyro, an Argentine-Italian actor, director and social activist, had to remove protest messages against the Iranian regime from his private Boeing 787 airplane to be allowed to land in Egypt and deliver humanitarian aid for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
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Pineyro, nicknamed the "Michael Moore of Argentina" for his politically critical artwork over the years, acquired the plane in 2021 from the Mexican national airline AeroMexico, and has since used it, among other things, for humanitarian activism, conducting flights to Ukraine and Afghanistan and assisting in evacuating residents from war zones.
Three sentences mentioning the protest against the Iranian regime are printed on the plane's fuselage: "No woman should be forced to cover her head," "No woman should be killed for not covering her head," and "No man should be hanged for saying this."
Additionally, one of the aircraft's tail wings bears the image of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested and brutally killed by Tehran's morality police in September 2022, leading to massive protests brutally suppressed by the regime. The other side of the plane's tail features the image of Iranian footballer Amir Reza Nasr Azadani, who was sentenced to 26 years in prison for participating in protests against the regime.
The massive protest erupted after the death of the young Kurdish-Iranian woman last September. Amini, 22, was arrested by the morality police in Tehran while visiting her family. Eyewitnesses reported that the police forcefully put her in a van, alleging that she didn’t properly wear her head covering, the hijab.
During her arrest, Amini collapsed and fell into a coma, and three days later she died in the hospital. Her family claims she was beaten, and marks of abuse were visible on her body. However, Iranian authorities argue that she had pre-existing medical conditions and didn’t experience any violence.
Pineyro, noted on the X social media platform that the Egyptian government didn’t allow his plane to land at the El Arish International Airport in Sinai, about 40 kilometers from the Gaza border. Therefore, he had to remove Amini’s image from the plane's tail and the sentence "No woman should be killed for not covering her head" from the fuselage.
Pineyro posted a video showing the removal of the image from the plane's tail. After this alteration, he continued his humanitarian activities, departing from Buenos Aires to Warsaw on December 18 and then to Madrid on December 20. On December 21, the plane flew to Egypt, unloaded the aid and returned to Spain.