Isis? Not Isis
Sinai passenger jet crash was not terror attack, says Egypt in defiance of Russia
Egypt dramatically reopened the question of what brought down a Russian holiday flight over the Sinai Desert when its investigators said yesterday that they could find no evidence of a bomb.
Metro jet flight 9268 crashed on 31 October, shortly after taking off from Sharm elSheikh on a charter flight to St Petersburg. There were no survivors among the 224 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus A321.
Captain Aym anal- Muqaddam, of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Central Directorate, said there was no indication of “unlawful interference” with the plane.
The investigators’ findings flatly contradict the Kremlin’s insistence last month that an improvised explosive device was responsible.
Four weeks ago Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Service, told President Vladimir Putin he could say “with confidence” that terrorists were to blame.
“According to our experts, a self-made explosive device equivalent to up to 1kg of TNT was set off on board,” he said. Earlier Russian officials said there were traces of explosive on some of the bodies.
Egypt’s announcement unlocks other theories about the cause of the tragedy. These include a failure in the aircraft’s pressure bulkhead, possibly a result of earlier structural damage in a tailstrike; an explosion in a fuel tank; or a catastrophic fire involving lithium batteries.
Mo sc o w ’ s or i g i n a l announcement surprised the aviation community at the time. Although Russia is represented in the official investigation, along with France (where the plane was designed) and Ireland (home of the leasing company that