Mystery of another civil airliner shot down over Ukraine

We are still no nearer to knowing exactly who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine (see my blog of July 20), and perhaps we never will be, but it was not the first civil airliner to be shot down over the country.

On October 4, 2001, a Siberia Airlines Tupelov Tu-154 (similar pictured) was hit by what was believed to be a Ukrainian missile while en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Russia, and crashed into the Black Sea. None of the 78 people on board survived.

With the crash coming so soon after 9/11, the favourite explanation at first was terrorism, but Ukraine eventually admitted the aircraft had been hit by one of its missiles that had gone astray during a military exercise, and paid compensation to victims’ families.

Subsequently, though, the Ukrainian government denied responsibility for the disaster, and a claim against it by Siberia Airlines remains unresolved. 

1986 air crash - accident or murder?

 

Police in South Africa have launched a fresh investigation into the plane crash in 1986 that killed the Mozambican president Samora Machel and 33 other people, including government ministers and officials.    The Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-134, taking them home from an international meeting in Lusaka, came down in a mountainous area of South Africa.

The following year, a South African judge, assisted by experts from the USA and the UK, said the cause was negligence on the part of the crew, but Russian experts working with the Mozambican authorities claimed the pilot was lured to disaster by a decoy navigation beacon.

Now there are reports that investigators have found detailed new evidence, including a sworn statement from a military intelligence agent of the apartheid era, plus documents, photographs and voice recordings.

The South African apartheid regime carried out a series of military strikes in Mozambique and other Africa states in the 1980’s. 

Iran air crashes - a long arm

Another Iranian passenger aircraft has crashed – this time at Mashhad airport, where it skidded off the runway and burst into flames, killing 17 passengers. It comes just ten days after another Iranian flight came down in the north of the country, killing all 168 people on board.

The aircraft involved in today’s crash is reported to be a Russian-built Ilyushin, while the one that came to disaster last week was a Russian Tupolev. The causes of the two accidents are not yet known, but Iran has a poor air safety record, partly because of the trade sanctions imposed by the US which have left the country reliant on ageing fleets, and often unable to buy spare parts.

Bad blood between Iran and the USA and UK goes back a long way. In 1951, the highly popular Dr Mohammed Mossadegh was elected prime minister, but when he nationalised the country’s oil reserves, the US and the UK engineered his removal, and the installation of the Shah’s despotic regime.

After the Shah was deposed in the Iranian revolution of 1979, a group of radical students took 52 people hostage at the American embassy claiming that it was a “nest of spies” and the US was up to its old tricks again, plotting to overthrow the new regime. In response America imposed sanctions, and they have remained in place with varying degrees of severity ever since.