Terrorist Suspects Were Aboard Air France 447

This may be a coincidence, but coincidences always make me suspicious.

Remember the Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic after leaving Rio de Janeiro? Everyone has heard that the plane went down into the ocean, and that everyone on board was killed. Pieces of wreckage have been found, and there is still a slight chance that the “black boxes” can be recovered.

At first there were reports that no explosion could have occurred, and then there were reports that an explosion had occurred. Then the likelihood of an explosion was played down. Terrorism was ruled out, and then it was not ruled out, and then it was ruled out again.

So what really happened?

Today comes some interesting news: two Islamic terrorists who were known to French intelligence were on board Air France 447. According to The Evening Standard:

Terrorist suspects were on doomed Air France plane

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on board the Air France flight which crashed and killed 228, it emerged today.

French secret service staff established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the Airbus 330-200 in Rio de Janeiro on 31 May.

Flight AF447 crashed in the mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a storm. While it is certain there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out.

Soon after news of the crash, agents from the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French equivalent of MI6, were sent to Brazil.

They established that the two passengers were on highly-classified French documents listing radical Muslims considered to be a threat.

A security service source said the link was “highly significant”.

What’s suspicious about all this is that it took ten days for the news about the two dangerous passengers to be made public.
– – – – – – – –
During those ten days, the authorities consistently downplayed any possibility of terrorism as the cause of the crash. It wasn’t ruled out entirely, but the emphasis was on equipment failure, flying too slowly for the altitude, and other non-terrorist possibilities.

Why?

This is not an isolated instance. Throughout the West, whenever a lethal event (often involving Muslims) occurs, public officials are at pains to discount any connection with “terrorism”. If the slaughter is not on the level of Madrid or 7/7, then terrorism is automatically disavowed. In the United States, whenever Sudden Jihad Syndrome strikes and a lone Muslim shoots a few people, a DHS spokesman is on TV before the smell of cordite has faded, reassuring the public that “there is no connection with terrorism”.

It has become a government mantra.

Even with the passenger list revealed, the possibility of terrorism is still being downplayed:

Investigators today refused to rule out terrorism, but an Air France spokesman said “all the indications” were that the plane suffered some kind of catastrophic equipment failure.

So what’s going on? Why this insistence that terrorism is unlikely when terrorists were in fact on that plane?

Disinformation or coincidence?

You decide.



Hat tip: Tuan Jim.

20 thoughts on “Terrorist Suspects Were Aboard Air France 447

  1. Does anyone else remember the GoV newsfeed article about that al Qaeda operative arrested in Brazil?

    The instant I heard about the plane crash, my next thought was about that arrest.

  2. What’s suspicious about all this is that it took ten days for the news about the two dangerous passengers to be made public.

    Not at all: We wouldn’t disturb the EUSSR elections, would we…?

  3. The best thing of this is that theres not a pip about it in Brazil. The Al Qaeda operative was released just after his arrest, our minister of justice (commnist) found improper to keep him there because of his convictions…

  4. I had a hunch… I found it unusual to publicly declare one month in advance that they “probably would not be able to find the box”… That sound short of saying “forget about it, we don´t want to find the box”

  5. The aircraft suffered multiple failures across redundant systems, pretty had to imagine unless something untoward occurred within the aircraft.

  6. Frank Kitman . . .“probably would not be able to find the box” . . .”forget about it, we don’t want to find the box”

    Could be . . .


    A French nuclear submarine reached the crash zone
    of Air France Flight 447 on Wednesday to join the search for the plane’s black boxes, the key to determining what brought the Airbus down in the sea off Brazil with 228 people on board

    ******

    Darrin Hodges “unless something untoward occurred within the aircraft.”

    witness saw “flash of white light” where Air France lost

    In a bad storm – this pilot recognized the difference between a bright flash and lightening.

    “Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, followed by a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds,” the captain wrote in the report, Llodra said.

    and

    Air France received bomb threat before jet crashed

    and

    Aviation experts said the vast area over which debris has been found suggested there was an in-flight explosion, but that did not mean a bomb had to be the cause.

  7. Just to play devil’s advocate here, anyone remember when that oxygen tank blew up on the Qantas flight to the Philippines a few months ago? – knocked a huge hole in the fuselage. A *similar* (not identical) occurrence in a more isolated area might have ended up this way too….

  8. Think and say what you want but we all know the truth will never come out.Its bad when something happens people blame terrorists,human error just isnt a factor anymore lets just point fingers i dont think the world will be happy unless its at war this scares me (looking for a hotel on MARS)

  9. How many acts of terrorism has there been at the hands of islamofacists since when? Let’s go back to the bombing of Marine barraacks in Lebanon. I am not sorry or afraid to admit that terrorism is one of the first things that I thought of.
    I make no apologies for that and it was not Christaian Copts that flew airliners into buildings on 9/11! When one group is responsible for for the majority of terrorist attacks around the globe.. well yeah, some of us think about a terrorist attack.

    Yes, it could have been caused by many other factors and we may NEVER
    know ther true cause of what brought flight 447 down. The possibilities are enormous.

  10. The al Qaida arrest in Brazil was the first thing that came to my mind the minute I heard about the AF 447 crash. If the two names on the passanger list really are the terrorists monitored by the French, it would be hard to say it was a coincidence. BUT, why didn’t al Qaida or any other terror group claim responsibility ? It would be impossible for any government to stop them from claiming responsability, a cover-up is out of the question. And I don’t find it suspicious that they are pessimistic about finding the black boxes. It’s 6-7 km under water, a vast, dark, mountainous area. No manned submarine can go that low, only robotic ones.

  11. yeah, that’s the other thing that’s weird. If some group really had done it (any group) – why wouldn’t they be claiming it. Definitely not an MO for a jihadist org.

  12. The fact 2 people known to have Islamic terrorism connections were on board is suspicious, as well as the arrest of an Al-Queda operative in Brazil. Throw in the way the airplane broke up in the air, the white flash seen by another pilot and the bomb threats received and one would be foolish to dismiss terrorism as a cause.

    I also believe if evidence is found of a bomb they will do everything possible to play it down. Still, let’s wait and see what the investigation reveals but remain vigilant.

  13. The Brazilian communist justice minister that Rocha referred to is the same who gave political asylum to Italian communist terrorist Cesare Battisti a couple of months ago, demands from Italy that he be extradited to face justice and pay for his crimes notwithstanding.

  14. Being that it’s strange that no terrorist group has claimed credit, I think it’s possible that the terrorists could have been acting alone. It’s just a thought…

  15. With the global economy as fragile as it is, it is “prudent” for governments to “play down” anything that would scare it lower.

    If it were terrorism, letting it slowly sink in (by the gradual release of any terrifying info) prevents panic and further economic damage ~which could have been the secondary effect desired of such a terror strike, thus frustrating their meta-intentions would only be a reasonable counter-move by governments.

    Don’t let the damage spread, but cautiously allow the truth to come out. And, by then, people are acclimatized to the likelihood of a terror attack, and there is little economic collateral damage.

    Terrorism has many aims, and the economic Jihad is high on their target list.

  16. Wow, these are some really paranoid suggestions. Did it occur to you that the terrorist link is tenuous because there are so many people on the terror list with VERY common Arabic names, like the equivalent of a “John Smith” in the English-speaking world? The names of the people on board were JUST homonyms of terrorist-suspect names, and I’m sure the poor blokes who were unfortunate enough to be bearing them were put through all sorts of hell at airport security before boarding the flight because of it!

    Plus, the whole point of a terrorist attack is to claim it & take responsibility for it publicly afterwards, in order to show the world how “powerful” your Islamist group is. If this crash were caused by terrorists, it would be considered a particularly “successful” attack, with over 200+ people killed. Why would the terrorists let the entire world just assume this was some sort of random accident rather than claim it as “victory” in their war against Western infidels?

    Oh that’s right: reason & logic get chucked out the door when, as you say, someone can’t help being “suspicious” of any coincidence involving a Mohammed ben Whatever. Sad.

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