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Evidence of explosives on crashed Russian plane
Channel News Asia | August 27 2004
MOSCOW : Investigators said they had found traces of explosive material on one of the two planes that crashed in southern Russia, Russian news agencies reported.
Earlier Russian authorities said they were still pursuing all leads in their investigation of the mysterious twin plane crashes that killed 89 people, while the press attributed the tragedies to terrorism.
Transport Minister Igor Levitin, speaking to Russian reporters, gave assurances that the bereaved would receive compensation, but he offered no indication that investigators were narrowing possible causes.
"No version is today being ruled out," Levitin, the head of a special government panel set up to investigate the crashes, was quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency as saying.
He said investigators were also looking into why no one came to collect the body of a woman he identified as Dzhabrailova -- a Chechen name.
His comments were in line with those from other top officials who have maintained since the investigation began that terrorism was among the theories being studied. Others included bad weather, contaminated fuel, pilot error and other factors.
Teams from the investigative panel traveled to both crash sites Thursday where they were joined by families and friends of the victims who traveled to the sites for body identification.
News agencies said the bodies of all but one of the total 89 victims had been recovered.
Oleg Yermolov, an official with the state aviation committee, was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying the flight data recorders recovered from both planes were badly damaged and it was uncertain how useful they would prove in the probe.
Other reports confirmed the "black boxes" were in bad shape but quoted officials saying they would yield useful data.
Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin meanwhile echoed President Vladimir Putin, vowing that the government would do everything possible to care for those bereaved by the crash.
Kudrin, quoted by ITAR-TASS, also vowed to reexamine and if necessary upgrade Russia's overall aviation infrastructure.
The Russian press meanwhile issued unusual and harsh criticism of the government, lashing out at investigating authorities for refusing to call a spade a spade and admit that the planes were in all likelihood brought down by terrorism or sabotage.
"Ahead of presidential elections in Chechnya, authorities do not want to admit the obvious fact: only Chechen rebels can organize attacks of this scale in Russia," the business daily Kommersant commented on its front pages.
The centrist paper Izvestia took a similar tone, accusing officials of "failing to see the links" between the plane downings and controversial elections scheduled to take place in war-torn Chechnya on Sunday.
"An inexplicable tragic coincidence -- that is how the official special services tried to explain the events," Izvestia said.
The hard-hitting commentary from Russia's major printed dailies was an unusual show of contempt for the government and stood in stark contrast to reporting by state-run broadcast media which hewed strictly to official accounts of the crashes.
The two planes, a Tupolev 134 carrying 43 people and a Tupolev 154 carrying 46, went down within minutes of each other Wednesday hundreds of kilometers (miles) apart soon after taking off from a Moscow airport bound for separate cities in southern Russia.
Putin abruptly cut short a vacation at the Black Sea resort of Sochi and rushed back to Moscow where he met with top members of an emergency state investigative committee and demanded "honest" results from their probe.
The fact that Putin named the transport minister rather than a law enforcement chief to head the investigation suggested that the government was focusing on regulatory infractions rather than potential motives in the crashes.
Late Wednesday however, the Russian leader also ordered the government to take responsibility for airport security out of the hands of local facility administrators and turn it over to the interior ministry.
Russian State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov said the parliament would study legislation in its autumn session to this effect, Interfax said.
Russia meanwhile observed a national day of mourning for the 89 dead, as relatives and friends of the victims gathered at the crash sites to help identify the remains.
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