Explosives traces found on 1 of Russian planes

cnn ^ | 8/27/04 | CNN

[Kornev]

Russian officials say traces of explosives have been found in wreckage of one of two crashed jetliners. Details soon.

[dinasour]

I forget who wrote this.

There are lies, dam* lies and STATISTICS.

Mark Twain

[Truth666]

Not answering my point, since I'm talking about a universe of TWO planes - that never happened before.

[AdmSmith]

Probably suicide widows from the Chechen war. Read this article from 2003

http://www.dawn.com/2003/05/28/int11.htm

Chechnya's suicide widows new threat for Russia

By Clara Ferreira-Marques


MOSCOW: Shakhidat Baymuradova, a rifle slung on her back, fought alongside her husband in the ranks of Chechen rebels until he was killed by Russian troops in 1999.

This month, her hair tucked in a headscarf, she strapped explosives to her waist and blew herself up at a festival where pro-Moscow officials had gathered. At least 16 people were killed.

Baymuradova, 46, whose first name translates as "martyrdom" in Arabic, was the latest in a string of female suicide bombers to strike in Chechnya over the last year - a frightening new form of rebel action in a decade-old conflict.

Women have traditionally been excluded from the fighting that has razed Chechnya, on Russia's southern fringe. Suicide attacks were almost unheard of in the first years of fighting. But the "black widows" have become a new threat to Moscow, already shaken by almost daily losses. Baymuradova's suicide attack on May 14 - an assassination attempt on a top pro-Moscow official who in the end escaped unhurt - also killed her woman accomplice.

Two days earlier, another woman was part of an attack in the region's usually peaceful north, driving a truck packed with explosives into a government complex.

"We are witnessing an escalation of the violence in Chechnya," said Salambek Maigov, a rebel envoy to Moscow." Seeing that Moscow's promises are empty, people are taking extreme measures. The Kremlin has finally lost control of the situation in Chechnya."

"BLACK WIDOWS": Kremlin officials dismiss the women, saying they act in isolation, bankrolled by mercenaries. They say a March referendum, which showed overwhelming popular support for Chechnya remaining part of Russia, showed the region is on track for Moscow's peace plan which calls for elections for a regional president and assembly.

"All terrorist acts committed by kamikaze suicide bombers are organised by Arab mercenaries," Ilya Shabalkin, a spokesman for Russia's anti-terrorist operations in Chechnya, said after Baymuradova's attack. "They use this same tactic in Israel." But Chechen rebel leaders describe the attacks as the illustration of widespread despair in the region, where they say the much-publicised vote has had little impact on real life.

"I cannot see any religious meaning behind these actions," rebel envoy Akhmad Zakayev said by telephone from London. "They spring from a desire for revenge."

Kheda Yusupova, from the village of Urus-Martan southwest of the Chechen capital Grozny, said grief made women easy prey." These women are motivated only by vengeance, and the rebels use this," Yusupova said. "It is only revenge. All the rewards on this earth are irrelevant for a person burdened with grief."

The first major suicide attack in the region came in June 2000, early in Russia's second campaign to contain separatist fighters in the region. Two women drove a truck crammed with explosives into a police building - one was Khava Barayeva, a relative of guerrilla leader Movsar Barayev who orchestrated last year's siege of a Moscow theatre in which 129 people died.

Barayeva's attack was so novel that it was recorded in song by one of Chechnya's most popular artists.The idea that women could fight for the Chechen cause did not hit home for most Russians, however, until the Moscow siege.

Several young women fighters appeared on footage aired on national television after Russian special forces ended the siege with a powerful gas before shooting the rebels.

Their faces covered by the hijab, they lolled dead in their seats. Most, said hostages who had spoken to them during the siege, had lost men folk in the war.

In a refugee camp in Ingushetia, on Chechnya's western border, another refugee, who refused to give her name, said four of her sons had been captured in Russian raids.

Zakayev, a spokesman for Chechnya's separatist president Aslan Maskhadov, said there would be more bombings as extreme factions of Chechnya's separatist movement - including warlord Shamil Basayev - gained prominence

[oceanview]

body cavity bombers.

[Moderate right-winger]

One of the worst things to die is through an air crash because being in an airplane cloaks you with a feeling of luxury. But look at 9-11 and the ElAl near miss.

[AdmSmith]

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/08/69d83656-c0ac-4da5-9459-ad2fb776865f.html

Analysis: Explosives Found In Russian Jet's Wreckage By Roman Kupchinsky

Wreckage of the Tu-154 (file photo) A Federal Security Service (FSB) spokesman announced on 27 August that traces of the explosive hexogen have been found in the wreckage of the Tu-154 passenger jet that crashed on 24 August, RTR and other Russian media reported. The spokesman added that so far no explosives have been found at the site of the crash the same day of a Tu-134 jet, although analyses are ongoing. This is the strongest evidence thus far that terrorism and not "pilot error" or "bad fuel" was responsible for the twin tragedies.

On the evening of 24 August, two passenger jets took off from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport within 20 minutes of each other. One, a Tu-134 carrying 43 passengers and crewmembers, was bound for Volgograd. The other, a Tu-154 with 46 passengers and crewmembers, was headed for Sochi on the Black Sea, where Russian President Vladimir Putin was vacationing.

At approximately 11 p.m. the two aircraft disappeared from radar screens. Prior to crashing near Rostov-na-Donu, some 1,000 kilometers south of Moscow, the TU-154 sent a distress signal indicating a possible attack.

The regional Emergency Situations Ministry chief told AP that the plane apparently disintegrated in the air and that wreckage was scattered over an area of 40-50 kilometers.

The second aircraft, the Tu-134, crashed in Tula Oblast about 200 kilometers south of Moscow. Witnesses reported seeing an explosion before the plane fell.

Meanwhile, a terrorist group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades posted a statement on a website on 27 August claiming responsibility for blowing up the two jets, AP and other media reported. The group's statement blames the Russians for "slaughtering Muslims" in Chechnya. It claimed that there were five "mujahedin" aboard each plane and that information about them will be published soon. The statement did not provide further details of the attacks.

On 31 July, a group by the same name claimed responsibility for the attempted assassination of Pakistani Prime Minister-designate Shaukat Aziz. The group claims to be connected with Al-Qaeda and it is believed to be named after Khaled Islambouli, the leader of a group that assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Russian officials at first appeared to blame human error for the crash. Russian RTR television ran a 10-minute news bulletin at 10 a.m. on 25 August featuring Sergei Ignatchenko, spokesman for the FSB's press office, who said: "Several versions are under investigation. The main version is that civil aviation rules were breached. The version that a terrorist act was to blame is also being looked into, but currently there is no evidence to back it up."

Ignatchenko went on to tell viewers that "poor fuel quality, pilot error, or inclement weather conditions" were among other possible causes of the crashes.

Experts told "The New York Times" on 26 August that the chances of two pilots making errors and bringing down their planes at the same time were highly unlikely. "That's pretty far out there on the chance bar," said Bob Francis, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

AP cited Jim Burin of the U.S.-based Flight Safety Foundation as saying that although "bad fuel" could cause an airplane's engines to fail, this would probably be noticed and reported by the crew early on, as the engines began to labor or misfire. He also said that initial reports from the crash scenes indicated that one plane's wreckage was spread out more widely than would normally be the case in a crash that was not preceded by an explosion, AP reported on 26 August.

The same day, Radio Rossii reported that an anonymous Russian expert said that it was virtually impossible for a TU-134 airplane to disintegrate in midair. "We were told on conditions of anonymity in the Gromov Flight Research Institute that the nature of the debris from the crashed Tu-134 that has already been found brings to the fore the possibility of a powerful external influence on the fuselage of the plane."

On 25 August, Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said that "one of the flight recorders from the Tu-134 has been found in good condition and the search for the second flight recorder is ongoing...."

On 26 August, RTR television contradicted Shoigu and announced that the flight recorders were found in poor condition and had to be reconstructed. A video of what was purported to be a destroyed flight recorder with recording tape in shreds laying on a table was broadcast on 27 August on RTR.

Investigators told RIA-Novosti on 26 August that the flight-data recorders aboard the planes have been recovered but that some of them are damaged and it will take "some time" to recover the data, depending on how extensive the damage is. Investigators said earlier that preliminary information from the recorders would be released on 26 August.

By the evening of 26 August another indication was revealed that the planes might have been destroyed by an act of terror. Interfax cited Transport Minister Igor Levitin, who is heading the government commission investigating the two crashes. as saying that the commission "is checking, among other things, reports that none of the relatives of a woman passenger by the name of Dzhebirkhanova have inquired about her" after the Tu-154 crash.

A source on the commission told Interfax that its first conclusions would be issued by 30 or 31 August. If so, this would take place after the 29 August presidential elections in Chechnya.

Chechen rebels have repeatedly threatened to disrupt these elections. And while no Chechen group has taken credit for these acts, if rebels were indeed responsible for the double disasters on 24 August this would be a major blow to the Kremlin and the credibility of the FSB.

[AdmSmith]

[freeperfromnj]

Explosives Found in Russian Jet Wreckage

http://www.nj.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-8/109356748066360.xml&storylist=international

[Walkingfeather]

Well actually Putin has all his troops in Chechnya where they have been fighting terrorist muslims for 10 years. Do you remember that little theater take over a year and a half ago? Or the Moscow apartment bombings that killed several hundred? Not to criticize you... Russia knows too well what Muslim Terrorist can do. Russia has responded far more violently than we have to terrorist. They are not seen as the worlds good guys so people turn a blind eye to their response.

[alrea]

if rebels were indeed responsible for the double disasters on 24 August this would be a major blow to the Kremlin and the credibility of the FSB

good news bad news? maybe they've run out of pilots that can steer.

[LikeLight]

Hello! The Russians are WELL aware that they are under attack by Muslim terrorists. WE in the U.S. are the ones who don't get it, because our twisted press always calls them "Chechen Rebels" or "Chechen Separatists" and fails to mention their radical Islamic nature. Our MSM does not want us to understand the global nature of this multiple front world war with radical Islam.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

If Putin was really serious about fighting Islam based terrorism, he would have joined with the USA after the theater fiasco in Russia! He didn't, and hung with the low life French and Germans. If had gotten together with the USA, we would have found OBL by now or killed him, Iran would be neutralized or free and the Middle East would be on its way toward stabilization.

[B0wman]

if you put a bomb on a plane, why do you need to send along five guys with it?

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

The report I heard said the take offs were one hour apart.

[Big Giant Head]

Mechanics a few years ago put the wrong hydraulic fluid in a plane and it crashed. It does happen.

I read a story where regular air was used to fill a tire on an aircraft. It heated up and caused a fire that caused the plane to crash.

[epluribus_2]

somehow I bet we do not hear a tape from Osama proclaiming his admiration of this one. I think the Osamaphonic recording devices have been silent so long because they are running out of source archival footage.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[LikeLight]

Putin is serious about fighting Islamic terrorism. He's also serious about triangulating and positioning Russia in the world power struggle. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

[Indie]

What morons still think this is something other than terrorism???

Someone criticized Russia for continuing to do biz with islamonazis. Haven't we?

How many examples would they like of American stupidity with isalmonazis currently going on? ;)

[Murph]

Any good investigator considers all the possibilities and lets the evidence speak for itself.

Yes there are alternative (non-terrorist) possibilities; but they are Soooooooo remote, that they don't really warrant serious consideration -- that is unless for some reason we are afraid to face the obvious.