Uruguay: Witnesses at Loggerheads with Air Force Over UFO

Source: Diario El Pais
http://www.elpais.com.uy/120413/pciuda-635888/ciudades/testigos-polemizan-con-la-fuerza-aerea-por-un-ovni/
Date: 04.13.12

Uruguay: Witnesses at Loggerheads with Air Force Over UFO

“They weren’t airplanes”, they argue. CRIDOVNI: “Case Closed”

By V.D. Castillo and R. Roselló

The Air Force report was unequivocal: the objects seen were nothing more than airliners. But the two witnesses insist that what they saw and recorded was something else. Such polemics tend to surround the UFO phenomenon.

“This commission, after having analyzed the witnesses’ account, determines the photos and videos provided on Saturday 7 April at the times indicated, correspond to fly-overs by two passenger transport airplanes belonging to Copa Airline and Aerolineas Argentinas,” says the report from the Comisión Receptora e Investigadora de Denuncias de Objetos Voladores No Identificados (CRIDOVNI) belonging to the Uruguayan Air Force.

But the expert opinion did not satisfy the witnesses. In Durazno, the two campers who recorded the objects at the mouth of the Los Molles creek in photo and video form, insist that they didn’t see airplanes.

“They weren’t airplanes. We never stopped seeing the light. We followed it everywhere it went and when it flew over us, those were movements that an airplane doesn’t make,” stated Edinson Volpe, who witnessed the event on Easter Saturday along with Lazaro Iriarte.

“If it’s an airplane, you’ll feel its turbines. This passed within fifty meters of us and we only heard a buzz,” states Volpe.

The witness added that he lives in an area that is heavily transited by airplanes and “what we saw on Saturday wasn’t one of them.”

OPEN CASES. “We’re accustomed to such reactions. For this reason we’d rather not comment after making a report. It’s case closed as far as we’re concerned. It involved fly-overs,” said Coronel Sanchez, CRIDOVNI’s director, to El PAIS.

The Durazno case went on to augment a file of over 1200 reports investigated by CRIDOVNI in its three decades of institutional existence.

Sanchez estimate that there are over 40 cases -- among the ones investigated-- for which no explanation was ever found, despite having exhausted the investigation protocol. One of the first was a complaint received in 1979 by commercial pilots who photographed a strange object that accompanied their flight for a good part of the trip.

After 33 years of existence, CRIDOVNI was unable to explain this and other phenomena. Three more recent cases that puzzle the Air Force researchers have also fallen into this category. They involve sightings made on the Montevideo coast between January and March of this year.

During the customary investigations, much like in the Durazno case, military radar systems that detected the presence of objects flying through the air were consulted, even though these objects did not correspond to any official or commercial flight.

“It could involve an airplane that doesn’t want to be identified. An illicit flight, an object launched into the air at a party, there can be many explanations of this sort,” Sanchez pointed out.

The fact is that during the investigation process, which can be as long and tedious as a police investigation, and includes the questioning of witnesses and the examination of photographs and videos, no conclusion was reached.

The military officer notes that over 95% of the cases have a logical or natural explanation, despite appearances. He recalls the case of the object seen in the Downtown district when a crowd went out to greet the Uruguayan team in 2010: it was a nylon bag.

According to CRIDOVNI’s records, 48% of the phenomena reported involve sightings of “red lights” in the sky. These are “luminous spheres” seen in various parts of the country and which are believed to be gas emissions. “We think that we properly control the air space, with people’s help,” Sanchez commented.

(Translation (c) 2012, Scott Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)