WikiLeaks Says Israeli Mossad Involved in 2010 Ethiopian Plane Crash
WikiLeaks website has revealed that Israeli intelligence, Mossad, may have been involved in the 2010 Ethiopian plane crash off Beirut's shore, said various media reports on Sunday.
They said that the plane have been the victim of sabotage by Israeli intelligence because it mistakenly suspected that senior Hizbullah official Hashem Safieddine may have been on the flight.
It also suspected that Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's nephew may have also been on board, along with 20 other members of the party.
The leaks reveal a series of emails between members of the Stratfor global intelligence organization that indicate that initial recordings obtained from the plane's black box do not include evidence that the pilot had committed an error that caused the crash.
They also highlighted Lebanese intelligence suspicions that the Mossad was involved in the incident due to the Israeli conflict with Hizbullah.
Furthermore, they said that the Israeli intelligence had received “mistaken or misleading” signs that Safieddine was in fact on the plane.
The emails added that analysts determined that the plane “could not have exploded in the air due to a pilot's error.”
Moreover, the WikiLeaks report said that Lebanese authorities do not want to “acknowledge the real reason why the plane crashed because it would expose poor security and the fact that explosives were placed on a plane at Beirut international airport.”
The Mossad was led to believe that some 20 Hizbullah members were on board the Ethiopian plane where they were heading to Uganda and Kenya where the party has dormant cells that may be planning to attack American and Israeli targets should a military strike be carried out against Iran, said the report.
A preliminary report on the Ethiopian plane which crashed off the Lebanese coast killing 90 people on board, including more than 50 Lebanese nationals, blamed “a series of errors on the part of the pilots who failed to take into account the signals emitted by the plane's instruments.”
The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 went down minutes after taking off from Beirut in bad weather on January 25, killing 83 passengers and seven crew. Lebanese officials have previously said that data recovered from the plane's black box showed all instruments were working well until it plunged into the Mediterranean in a fierce storm.
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