BEIRUT (AP) – The Ethiopian consulate in Lebanon has received the bodies of five Ethiopians who were killed in last month’s plane crash in the Mediterranean and they were to be flown home later.
The Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed on January 25, just minutes after takeoff from Beirut during a fierce thunderstorm. All 90 people on board died.
Five coffins, covered with Ethiopian flags, were handed over at a Beirut government hospital Saturday. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said they were of four women and a man.
According to lists released after the crash, there were 30 Ethiopians on the plane – 23 passengers and seven crew members.
A Lebanese forensics team returned on February 1 from Ethiopia with DNA samples from relatives to help identify victims.
Lebanon found an empty box but used the occasion to once again raise the issue of ‘pilot error.’ But the following two critical facts render the Lebanese allegation ineffective:
The airplane plunged into the sea as a ball of fire.
Flight ET409 captain was Habtamu Benti, a 42-year-old veteran who had over 20 years of experience under his belt (He was no novice to commit a deadly turn as Lebanon alleged).
Beirut has from day one adopted a two-pronged approach to build up the ‘guilty-image’ upon Ethiopian Airlines: while one Lebanese minister blames a ‘pilot error’ for the crash, another Lebanese minister pops up as a ‘damage-control’ factor, and says it is too early to determine what caused the crash.
Ethiopian Airlines in the meantime is seen struggling to stave off the negative publicity that is threatening to tarnish its long-standing good image. In fact, Ethiopian Airlines is saying Flight ET409 may have been the victim of a foul play.
Was a time-bomb planted on the plane blew it to pieces? Or a missile fired from one of the hills of Lebanon knocked the airliner off the sky? Questions are being asked.
Media reports implicate the Lebanese Hezbollah for the mid-air explosion.
Hezbollah denied the al-Liwaa report as baseless, according to a statement via the group’s al-Manar News Agency.
In the midst of this confusion, one question stands out prominently: Why are Lebanese officials blaming ‘pilot error’ although that depends on finding the crucial device – CVR – which is still missing in the sea, and no one knows whether it would be recovered anytime soon, or ever.
So far, what is known to the public constitutes the tip of the iceberg. It is the beginning of what could be an arduous journey.
“This was an al-Qaeda operation timed for one month to the day after its [al-Qaeda’s] failed attempt to destroy an American Northwest airliner bound for Detroit. It is becoming clear that either a bomb was planted on the Ethiopian flight with a timer or a passenger acted as suicide bomber,” according to a report on DebkaFile.
—- (Abraha Belai is founding editor of Ethiomedia.com)
