People are now speculating that the tragic Air France Flight 447 accident may have been a terrorist incident. French authorities say two names on the passenger list match those of known al-Qaida affiliates, and intelligence agents are in Brazil to find out more. (see also here, here and here).
I have looked around on the forums for claims of responsibility, but I couldn’t find anything. On the contrary, the few posts devoted to the issue suggest the grassroot jihadis themselves doubt an al-Qaida connection. In one discussion on Faloja, most of the seventeen contributors were skeptical. Some suggested the rumours were a ploy to tarnish the image of Muslims, or a way to draw attention away from technical problems that would affect Air France’s reputation. Several considered it a plot by the Zionist French press.
It is obviously too early to exclude terrorism, but in the absence of a claim of responsibility and technical evidence, I am sceptical too.
Document (Arabic): 06-10-09-falloja-france-accuses-al-qaida
One Response
From the beginning, I was very sceptical about a terrorist responsability in the Air France Flight 447 crash. As terrorism is fuelled by media exposition, my main argument was that there is “no claim” about attacking the Air France Flight 447. It doesn’t seem very “terrorist” to crash a plane in order to NOT claim any responsability for that !!!
One could think about “lone wolves theory” commiting terrorist act against the Air France Flight 447 outside of any command structure… However, even in this case, terrorists would have left a message in order to claim their responsability in the terrorist incident. Nothing has come up yet…
The explanation (http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2009/06/09/sondes-defectueuses-de-l-airbus-a330-un-syndicat-appelle-a-refuser-les-vols_1204676_3224.html#ens_id=1200707) about Airspeed Sensors seems quite possible and the most reasonable thing for now…