[Unsurprisingly, the media today is full of articles comparing the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 with the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie. One interesting example, from the United Arab Emirates newspaper The National, deals with the history of aircraft accident investigation and contains the following:]
The job of the aircraft investigation team is sometimes to confirm the expected cause of a crash, but also sometimes to uncover the unexpected.
One of the most famous examples of the former is the destruction of Pan-Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988. The 270 fatalities included 11 people on the ground.
From the start it was clear that the crash had been caused by a mid-air explosion. The question was, who or what was responsible?
The cockpit recorder in the tail was found in less than 24 hours and confirmed there had been no warning.
Parts of the Boeing 747 were shipped to the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Board headquarters in southern England, where a three dimensional reconstruction of a section of the hull was carried out.
Meticulous examination determined that an explosion had destroyed the aircraft, with other fragments showing that it had been planted in a Samsonite suitcase.
Traces of a circuit board dug out of the Scottish soil showed it had been hidden in a Toshiba cassette player, similar to one that had been used in an earlier attempted terrorist attack in West Germany. Libyan intelligence was blamed for the crime, with an intelligence officer, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, eventually convicted.
“It looks as if MH370 broke up at 35,000 feet without any distress signal being broadcast, 41 minutes after the wheels left the tarmac. I hope to hell this is just an evil coincidence but does anyone know where Marwan Khreesat is right now?”
I was probably not being entirely serious with that comment about Khreesat, but the coincidences are a bit spooky. And the details of how to make a device like the ones Khreesat was making have been in the public domain for 15 years or so.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are people on this flight who might be drugs mules and who may be entirely unconnected with the reason the plane went down....
If it did go down. It's hard to see what else could have happened to it, but the wreckage is being very elusive.
Even if it is a coincidence it is still a very good question. Khreesat seems to have lived a very charmed life before and after he was detained during the Autumn Leaves raids and it would be very interesting indeed to know exactly what he has been up to since. We know that that he was a Jordanian agent, that the Germans released him (because they were not persuaded that his bomb-making activities indicated any criminal intent) and that the FBI later "persuaded" the Scottish police not to issue a warrant for his arrest. It will be interesting to see if al-Jazeera made any attempt to trace and interview him for their programme.
ReplyDeleteEven if it is a coincidence it is still a very good question. Khreesat seems to have lived a very charmed life before and after he was detained during the Autumn Leaves raids and it would be very interesting indeed to know exactly what he has been up to since. We know that that he was a Jordanian agent, that the Germans released him (because they were not persuaded that his bomb-making activities indicated any criminal intent) and that the FBI later "persuaded" the Scottish police not to issue a warrant for his arrest. It will be interesting to see if al-Jazeera made any attempt to trace and interview him for their programme.
ReplyDeleteThe secret is in the timing. The (trailer for the) Al Jazeera film reveals that Khreesat is living in Amman and even has a Facebook page! And they did interview him. Whether they got any sense out of him is something that remains to be seen.
ReplyDeleteI'm opening a X-file on this one. There is not a shred (yet 1800hrs 11/3/14) of evidence this plane was destroyed over water.
ReplyDelete