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Egyptian Pilots Reject Batutti's Liability for EgyptAir Crash
EGYPT, June 25 (IslamOnline)- Egypt's airline and Pilots' Union rejected Monday a report in the U.S. magazine Newsweek, that Egyptian investigators privately agreed with their U.S. counterparts that a co-pilot's suicide was the likely cause of the October 1999 EgyptAir crash, in which 217 people died.
Secretary of the Egyptian Pilots Union, Ashraf Al Hawari, in a statement sent to IslamOnline in Cairo said his union rejected the report about Gamil al-Battuti responsibility for the tragic accident. "The report published in Newsweek is false," said a high-ranking EgyptAir official on condition of anonymity.
Newsweek reported Sunday that U.S. intelligence intercepts revealed that Egyptian investigators secretly agreed with U.S. findings that the plane's co-pilot, Gamil al-Battuti, intentionally crashed the Boeing jet into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after take-off from New York on October 31, 1999, with the aim of killing himself.
Hawari said it was "unbelievable" that the Egyptian investigator team would say that Battuti committed suicide at the same time they presented a paper, to the International Pilots Union, proving that the cause of the crash was a defect in the plane's tail.
Hawari added that the American authorities had been trying, from the beginning of the investigations, to put the blame of the crash on the Egyptian pilots.
"They tried to put the blame on the main captain pilot El Habashi, and when they failed to come up with good reason to condemn him, they started blaming the crash on al Battuti", he said.
Hawari said the Egyptian Pilots Union managed to convince the International Pilot Union to issue a statement saying that there was a defect in the plane's tail, noting that this kind of defect was in many of the Boeing 767 models.
The same defect was found in some planes of the Mexican Airlines and in one of the American Airlines. The U.S. Aviation Federal Authority has asked for the examining of tail lifters in the Boeing 767.
A hundred and fifty six planes of the same model, in different airlines all over the world, were found to have defective tails.
Newsweek also reported Sunday that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is to release its final report on the crash, which concludes that Battuti caused the Boeing to dive into the Atlantic shortly after take-off from New York on October 13, 1999, killing all on board.
Adding that U.S. intelligence secretly monitored communications between Cairo and an Egyptian investigation team in Washington, the magazine claimed "intercepts reveal that despite their public stance, the Egyptian investigators privately agreed with their U.S. counterparts that suicide was the likely cause" of the crash.
Egyptian authorities have demanded the report be based on facts alone.
Earlier in Cairo, the former head of EgyptAir's committee in charge of accident investigation, suggested the flight had been sabotaged.
"Investigators have said that the plane's engines were switched off," said Essam Ahmed, former head of EgyptAir's committee in charge of investigating the plane accident, "but if that had happened, the plane would have fallen steadily."
All on board were killed when the Boeing 767 crashed into the sea off the coast of
Massachusetts in October 1999. No mechanical cause for the crash has been found.
The Egyptian government and state-run newspapers have made no comment on the Newsweek story.
But the opposition paper, Al-Wafd, said the U.S. government has sparked an "espionage scandal" by eavesdropping on EgyptAir officials investigating the airplane catastrophe.
Al-Wafd, a daily of the liberal opposition party of the same name, ran the front-page headline: "American espionage scandal against Egypt."
The United States is "a state founded on monitoring and espionage" which is "not ashamed to spy on itself as shown by the Watergate scandal, when the president (Richard Nixon) spied on his adversaries," it charged.
"Will Egypt keep quiet on this flagrant violation and what justification will Washington give Cairo about this crime?" asked Al-Wafd, which concluded the authorities here will opt for "silence."
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