Government newspaper suspects sabotage in EgyptAir crash

Tuesday, November 9, 1999

CAIRO -- Egypt's government-owned press has now raised the possibility that EgyptAir Flight 990 was downed in an attack meant to stop the training of Egyptian airmen in the United States.

The government Al Akhbar daily said the presence of 33 Egyptian officers on board the doomed flight on Oct. 31 has raised suspicion of foul play. "Sabotage is thus highly possible," the newspaper said on Sunday.

Egyptian military sources said the officers were training to fly the Apache AH-64D helicopter. The officers in the crash included a brigadier general.

Writer Mohamad. W. Kandil said he did not expect the United States to acknowledge sabotage and that an investigation of the crash would take years. "However, in most sabotage operations, as in the case of the Pan American airliner which exploded several years ago over Lockerbie, Scotland, no confirmed culprit is brought to justice, only suspects are, and this after investigations have lasted quite a long time coming through," he said.

Last week, the Egyptian government Al Gomhuriya daily said the EgyptAir jet might have been downed by a U.S. missile and charged Washington with a coverup. The United States has protested the allegation.

Egyptian sources said on Monday that President Hosni Mubarak is expected to return from Paris by Wednesday, when parliament opens its new session. Mubarak has been in Paris for the last week for tests for what officials described as an ear infection.

Mubarak is being faced with calls by opposition parties for reform in the electoral law.

Over the weekend, A confidant of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak angered the American officials with repeated suggestions that the United States was behind the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, in which 217 people, including the 33 Egyptian military officers, were killed.

"The circumstances of this tragedy remain suspect," Samir Ragab wrote in his daily column Saturday in the government-owned daily Al Gomhuriya. Ragab is editor of the newspaper.

State Department and Pentagon officials have been angered by the suggestion and U.S. ambassador Daniel Kurtzer has protested Ragab's accusations. U.S. officials said the accusations could make the thousands of Americans in Egypt, many of whom employed in overseeing the $2.1 billion in annual aid to Cairo, targets of revenge attacks.

Ragab's accusations began on Tuesday when he said in an editorial in both Al Gomhuriya, and its sister paper the Egyptian Gazette, that Washington was trying to cover up U.S. military responsibility for the deadly accident.

"The plane crash may have been due to surface-to-air missile which hit the wrong target or a destructive laser ray aimed at the aircraft by one of the quarrelling US security services," Ragab said. "The U.S. authorities have announced that the inquiry will last a long time which means the results of the investigation will amount to nothing and will perhaps never be made public."

Earlier, Mubarak and several of his ministers urged U.S. authorities to search for a link between the EgyptAir crash and the TWA crash in 1996 in the same area off the Atlantic coast. The TWA crash has never been resolved.

Kurtzer responded with a letter to both Ragab and Egyptian Information Minister Safwat Sherif. But Al Gomhuriya waited four days until it published the ambassador's reply.

"Insinuations of possible cover-up by U.S. authorities, potential intelligence secrets, deliberate delays and obfuscation in the investigation, missiles and 'laser rays' are insulting," Kurtzer said in his letter, published on Saturday. "They fly in the face of deep friendship and partnership between Egypt and the United States. It is irresponsible to engage in the baseless speculation about the EgyptAir Flight 990 tragedy contained in [your] column. Such idle musings show disrespect to American and Egyptian victims and the tireless efforts put forth by American and Egyptian individuals and institutions to ease the suffering of the families and determine the true causes of the crash."