Saturday, May 17, 2008
As Egyptians protest the move toward a criminal probe, reports emerge that a crew member said a prayer and plunged the plane into the ocean.
Nov 16, 1999 | Investigators now believe an EgyptAir Flight 990 relief pilot took control of the plane and deliberately dived it into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 217 people aboard.
The New York Times reported late Tuesday night that "a detailed analysis of the voice and data recorders aboard Flight 990 indicates that a crew member, possibly a relief pilot, was responsible" for the crash.
According to the Times, the suspect, relief pilot Gamil al-Batouti, a 59-year-old, veteran EgyptAir employee, uttered "Tawakilt ala Allah," which is roughly translated as "I put my faith in God"or "I entrust myself to God," before diving the plane toward the ocean.
The Times said government officials believe the plane's captain, Ahmed al-Habashi, had left the cockpit and struggled in vain upon his return to take back control. The crew member originally believed to have uttered the prayer, Adel Anwar, was on board, but not in the cockpit, officials said.
The revelation came after a day of confusion. Earlier Tuesday, National Transportation Safety Board delayed plans to turn over leadership of the EgyptAir crash investigation to the FBI, because of concerns by Egyptian government officials that such a move indicated that criminal activity is suspected.
News organizations, including CNN, reported that the Egyptian government is "extremely sensitive" to the decision to label the investigation criminal, according to officials close to the probe.
At a news conference late Tuesday afternoon, NTSB Chairman Jim Hall said that additional Egyptian authorities and experts would join the investigation to "process and analyze" information related to the crash.
U.S.-Egypt cooperation may be necessary, but it could also slow down the investigation. "The U.S. and Egypt work closely together, but the teams involved sometimes don't work out well," said Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow and co-director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It took the FBI a long time to put an effective team together in Saudi Arabia" after a 1996 bombing at Khobar Towers that killed 19 airmen.
"Many of the [FBI] who initially went in were not particularly competent," Cordesman added. "They spoiled a relationship that had worked well between the CIA and Saudi intelligence and the FBI was much of the problem during the early investigation."
The planned shift to the FBI followed an article in Tuesday's Washington Post that, just before shutting off the plane's autopilot and sending it into a catastrophic plunge, one of the plane's pilots uttered a Muslim prayer in Arabic.
The information, extracted from the plane's recently recovered cockpit voice recorder, also included what is described as the sound of a door opening more than once. A source also told the paper that the plane's captain had left the cockpit -- leaving the other pilot alone -- and returned just as the plane began its dive into the sea. Sources would not confirm the actual words of the prayer, but MSNBC reported Tuesday that it could be loosely translated as "I put my life in your hands." Investigators stressed that it is not known whether the prayer was related to the cause of the crash, noting that Arabic speakers frequently make references to God in everyday speech.
The BBC reported Tuesday that the pilot left the cockpit shortly before the prayer was uttered, and that when he returned, he said "What is going on?" When he took back the controls, the BBC reports that he ordered the co-pilot, "Pull with me, pull with me," apparently attempting to recover the plane from its steep dive.
When asked by a reporter to elaborate on the contents of the cockpit voice recorder widely reported by the media Tuesday, Hall said, "We have not chosen to characterize it because there are still some differences in some of the cultural interpretations of the Arabic language that's spoken on the cockpit voice recorder.
"We're working to try to determine exactly the words that were spoken. We are prepared to continue with that process ... with additional resources and individuals from the Egyptian government in the United States in the next couple of days to assist with that effort," Hall said.
The agency has refused to release transcripts -- in Arabic or English -- of the cockpit voice recorder to the media.
Hall said he met again Tuesday with FBI Director Louis Freeh, who agreed that investigation should not be transferred until the Egyptian authorities had a chance to review all materials related to the crash.
The Associated Press reported late Tuesday that investigators had synchronized the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder and had discovered that a pilot uttered the prayer just before the autopilot was disengaged and the plane began to fall.
NTSB's Hall, however, said he won't be able to confirm that the synchronization has occurred until Egyptian officials have a chance to review the data from both recorders.
Tuesday's Washington Post reported that the "disturbing" discovery of the pilot's absence, the co-pilot's prayer and the plane's sudden plunge led NTSB's Hall to call a meeting on Monday with Freeh in which the two discussed transferring jurisdiction over the investigation to the FBI.
Among other developments in the case, the FBI and NTSB have requested that the U.S. Navy Supervisor of Salvage contract a large ship with heavy lifting capability that can be used to raise the cockpit and other parts of the crashed plane crucial to the investigation. Only two such ships exist in the United States.
The investigation at the accident site off Nantucket Island has been hampered in recent days by poor weather and visibility, but better weather is expected later this week.
Additionally, Hall told reporters, "We have so far found no sign of a mechanical or weather-related event that could have caused this accident."
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