Air France Jet - A bomb?

[David Guyatt]

Curious goings on over the Air France Jet disaster.
[URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/5442896/Air-France-plane-was-it-a-bomb.html"]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...-bomb.html[/URL]

Air France plane: was it a bomb?

An Air France pilot has suggested that a bomb could have been the cause of the crash which led to a plane go missing over the Atlantic this week. However most experts have dismissed the suggestion.

Published: 11:03AM BST 04 Jun 2009


Air France Airbus A330: Air France confirmed that 'it had no news' of flight
number AF 447 Photo: AFP

The Air France plane is likely to have broken up in mid-air, experts have said and the vast area over which debris has been found suggested there was an explosion while the aircraft was in flight.
One anonymous Air France pilot suggested that a bomb could "very well" be the cause of the crash. He said: "One can very well imagine that a bomb caused the aircraft's depressurisation and that the plane took time to break up. It could just as well have been a big bomb that blew up the entire plane, which would explain why the aircraft didn't have time to send an alert signal."
Unnamed experts quoted by the Le Monde newspaper said the "wide dispersion of wreckage discovered suggests that the Airbus (A330-200) exploded at high altitude".
However the involvement of a bomb has been dismissed by most and remains extremely unlikely.
Experts said the most likely scenario was that the break-up was caused by massive depressurisation inside the plane.
If such depressurisation had occurred at high altitude, passengers would have almost certainly fallen instantly unconscious and may have been unaware of their fate.
Jean-Louis Borloo, the ecology minister in charge of transport, said yesterday: "Terrorism cannot be ruled out at this stage. There is no indication it was a bomb for now. We cannot rule it out 100 per cent, but we have no indication it was," he said.
Professor Philippe Juvin, head of casualty at Beaujon hospital west of Paris, said: "It would have been as quick as the moment when one falls asleep."
Investigators will examine a bomb threat made against a flight from Buenos Aires to Paris just days before Flight 447 disappeared.
A total of 228 are thought to have died victims on board flight AF 447 from Rio to Paris.
British schoolboy Alexander Bjoroy, 11, was remembered on Wednesday as a keen sportsman with a "happy demeanour" He was returning with a chaperone to Clifton College preparatory school in Bristol, after spending half-term with his expatriate parents, Robin and Jane, and his younger sister, Charlotte, nine, in Brazil. He had been a pupil at the school since January this year.
Nicholas Reeves, head of the British School in Bogota, Colombia, where Alexander's parents had lived from 2005 to 2007, said: "In very little time people came to know him well for his happy demeanour, and charisma. He had a really good sense of humour. He was always laughing and making jokes."
Alexander's parents issued a statement in Brazil in which they said they were "deeply upset about the loss of our son under such tragic circumstances".
They added: "Our thoughts are also with the families and friends of all those who were on board."
Air accident investigators said they were "not optimistic" about retrieving the plane's black boxes despite confirmation that debris spotted 400 miles off Brazil's coast – including a piece of metal 23 feet in diameter – came from the missing plane.
Paul-Louis Arslanian, chief of the French civil aviation ministry's bureau of investigation, said it would be very difficult to recover the cockpit voice and flight data recorders depth of the ocean – up to 10,000 ft – and its rugged floor.
Investigators have around 30 days to find the boxes, which will give the clearest information about what happened, after which their homing devices will cease to function.
"Without them it will be very difficult to reach established fact, but we can reach a possible explanation," said Mr Arslanian. "The investigation will not be easy... but we are not giving up," he said.
Five navy vessels were converging on the area and a French mini-submarine will arrive next week.
The investigation's first findings should be released by the end of the month.
Most of those on-board the Airbus A330-200 were Brazilian or French but they included a total of 32 nationalities.

But no... no one actually knows what happened but it seems it's not a bomb:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8083474.stm

Debris 'not from Air France jet'



Debris recovered from the Atlantic by Brazilian search teams is "sea trash" and not from a lost Air France jet, a Brazilian air force official has said.

Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso contradicted earlier reports, saying "no material from the plane has been recovered".

Teams found buoys and a wooden pallet and spotted a fuel slick, and are now searching for an airline seat and a chunk of metal seen earlier this week.

Relatives have been told that there is no hope of survivors being found.

In Paris, Air France Chief Executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon and Chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta briefed passengers' relatives in a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport where they have been waiting for news.

Mr Gourgeon said the Airbus A330 jet, which was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, broke apart either in the air or when it hit the sea.

"What is clear is that there was no landing," said a support group representative who was at the meeting.

"There's no chance the escape slides came out," Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc said.

In Rio de Janeiro, hundreds of people gathered at a memorial service attended by the French and Brazilian foreign ministers.

"Those who are missing are here in our hearts and in our memories," French minister Bernard Kouchner told mourners.

A memorial service was held in Paris on Wednesday.

Oil slick

Speaking in Recife, the north-eastern Brazilian city from where search operations are being co-ordinated, Brig Cardoso rowed back on earlier declarations that the wooden pallet and fuel slick had come from the Air France jet.

SEARCH FOR FLIGHT AF 447
1 June: Contact lost with plane over mid-Atlantic
2 June: First debris spotted from the air includes an airline seat. Brazilian defence minister says debris is from missing plane
3 June: More debris spotted, including a 7m-wide chunk of metal. Fuel slick seen on ocean surface
4 June: Buoys and pallet recovered from ocean said to be from plane. Officials later retract statement
The Airbus A330 was not carrying wooden pallets, it was reported, while a large slick spotted in the area most likely spilled from a ship rather than from a downed plane.

Other fuel found in the sea probably did come from the Airbus, he said.

"It has been verified that the material did not belong to the plane, they were wood pallets that were used by ships and sometimes planes, but in this flight to Paris, there were no wood pallets," Brig Cardoso said.

Navy ships are now reported to be scouring the surface of the ocean, about 1,100km (690 miles) north-east of Brazil's coast, in an effort to locate other debris spotted from the air during the first sweeps of the area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Rescuers hold out more hope that what was reported to be a seat and a large chunk of metal could have come from the plane, reports say.

Three more Brazilian boats and a French ship equipped with small submarines are expected to arrive in the area in the next few days.

He said the search effort would continue, with the main focus on finding bodies, but bad weather is forecast for the region on Friday.

'Clock ticking'

French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said the priority was looking for wreckage from the plane, before turning the search to flight data recorders.

"The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear," he said.

French officials have said the recorders, which could be deep under water, may never be found.

Officials have warned that they are far from working out the cause of the crash.

Investigators are reported to be relying on a stream of automated messages sent out just before the crash, which suggested the plane's systems shut down as it flew through high thunderstorms.

Investigators have suggested that speed sensors failed or iced over, causing erroneous data to be fed to onboard computers. This might have caused the plane to fly too fast or too slowly through the storm, leading it either to break apart or stall and fall out of the sky.

A Spanish pilot flying in the area at the time of the crash was quoted by his airline, Air Comet, as saying he had seen an "intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds".

The paper said Airbus, the maker of the plane, would issue A330 jets with new advice on flying in storms.

Airbus declined to comment on the report, though an unnamed official told AFP news agency that it was normal to update airlines following an accident.

[Peter Lemkin]

While it is possible someone would just want to hurt Air France, the place I'd start in looking for possible foul play would be who was onboard. Not impossible, but unlikely much would still exist and float that would give many clues to cause of disaster. Flight recorders are in DEEP water and I doubt they will be recovered - maybe.

[Peter Lemkin]

Debris found not from Air France flight after all, Brazil says
Brazilian officials retract statements that items pulled from the Atlantic were remains of Flight 447. Likelihood of discovering the cause of the crash appears to be fading.
By Chris Kraul
June 6, 2009
Reporting from Bogota -- Brazilian officials on Friday retracted assertions that debris spotted in the Atlantic Ocean was wreckage of Air France Flight 447, and experts warned that the possibility of locating debris and determining the cause of the crash was fading.

The Brazilian air force said that debris picked up Thursday was not that of the Airbus A330, as Defense Minister Nelson Jobim had said. Moreover, officials said a fuel slick they previously said was caused by the ditched airliner may have come from a ship.
-------------------------------------------------------
Strange....not many planes just disappear without prior mayday call or similar. Of course [they never mention this] but there are both radar and satellite intelligence on all planes in the whole world and yet we hear nothing of what they saw happen.......like not seeing them for flights on 911 [and other occassions].

[Peter Lemkin]

Air France bomb threat four days before jet crashed

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories...-21413591/

By Martin Fricker 4/06/2009

Air France received a bomb threat four days before Flight 447 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, it was revealed yesterday.

An anonymous caller made the threat to a plane heading from South America to Paris - just like the doomed jet.

And the theory that Flight AF 447 could have been downed by a bomb was reinforced last night as it emerged wreckage from the Air France jet has been found spread over 55 miles of the Atlantic.

Following the phone threat, Flight 415 was grounded in Buenos Aires as sniffer dogs made a full search - but no explosives were found and the Boeing 777 was allowed to leave the Argentine capital.

Investigators are examining links with Monday's tragedy, when Flight 447 fell from the sky killing all 228 passengers and crew, including British schoolboy Alexander Bjoroy. Pilots did not even make a Mayday call, which would have taken just seconds.


Tragic victim Alexander Bjoroy, 11, was returning to school in UK

One Air France pilot said he believed the Airbus 330 was blown up by terrorists after leaving Brazilian capital Rio de Janeiro. The long-haul captain, who did not want to be named, said: "It is highly likely a bomb went off. I've flown these jets 10 years. The chances of it being an electrical fault are unfeasible.

"There are five electricity supplies on board and they would all have to fail."

The pilot added the chances of it crashing after being struck by lightning were "extremely rare in modern planes".

He also dismissed the idea the pilot could have tried to land on the sea.

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He said: "That requires electricity. If there was electricity, they could have sent a Mayday, which never happened." He added: "If there was an explosion on board, the wreckage would be spread over a very wide area, as it was.

"In my opinion, the only explanation is a bomb went off on the plane."

Another Air France pilot suggested the aircraft may have hit another plane.

Captain Cedric Maniez said: "Maybe a collision with a drug-smuggling aircraft which nobody reports missing."

French officials have not ruled out terrorism but with no group claiming responsibility they believe it is unlikely.

Investigators may never know why the plane crashed. Its two black boxes could be 20,000ft under water.

Search teams found more debris, including a 23ft chunk, floating 400 miles off the coast.

Families were continuing to grieve for loved ones last night. Parents Robin and Jane Bjoroy, who work for an oil firm in Rio, waved off Alexander, 11, at the airport as he returned to boarding school in Bristol with a chaperone. They confirmed his death "with deep sadness" in a statement, adding: "Alexander was returning to school after half-term in Rio. Naturally, we are deeply upset about the loss."

John Milne, headteacher of Clifton College Preparatory School where Alexander boarded, said: "He will be sorely missed by pupils and staff."

Five Britons were among the dead, which included Brazilian, French, German, Chinese, Italian, Swiss, Lebanese and Hungarian passengers.
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By SLOBODAN LEKIC Associated Press Writer
Posted: 06/03/2009 01:26:59 PM PDT
Updated: 06/03/2009 03:07:45 PM PDT

Click photo to enlarge

In this photo released by Brazil's Defense Ministry, an... ((AP Photo/Brazil Defense Ministry))

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BRUSSELS—The flight recorders from Air France Flight 447 could be scattered nearly anywhere across a vast undersea mountain range that lies as much as four miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

In those remote, forbidding waters between Brazil and West Africa, variations in temperature and salinity can reduce visibility and obscure homing signals from the devices. And for salvage crews, time is short because the "black boxes" will only emit signals for a month.

Search planes and ships located more debris from the Airbus A330 on Wednesday, but high seas and heavy winds delayed the arrival of deep-water submersibles that could be used to find wreckage on the ocean floor.

The head of France's accident investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian, said he was "not optimistic" that officials would ever recover the flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder from the plane, which disappeared Sunday night minutes after flying into a dangerous band of storms. The cause of the crash is still a mystery.

Water in the area is said to run as deep as 22,950 feet, possibly prohibiting the use of manned submersibles.

Instead, remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, will probably be used because they are better equipped to withstand immense water pressures.

"Even ROV equipment can hardly work at those depths, but it remains the best available option," said Tor Norstegard, an investigator with Norway's aviation accident investigation
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board and an expert in recovery of wreckage from the North Sea.

"It's one thing to go down to look at things, but it's a much greater problem to take equipment down in order to bring up pieces of wreckage."

Flight recorders aboard airliners do not float, and the major safety agencies do not require them to do so, but many experts have called for that to change. Some military transports have a secondary, detachable recorder on top of the fuselage that is designed to float.

The underwater locator beacons on the plane's flight recorders are designed to emit continuous "pinging" signals for about a month. That usually gives salvage crews ample time to locate and recover them.

The beacons have a range of about 3.7 miles, which means recovery ships might have to deploy a listening device more than a half-mile below the surface to detect the signals.

Norstegard said the Air France search may take a long time because the deep waters contain layers that vary in temperature and salinity.

Those changing layers "can deflect or block the signals emitted from the pingers, making it virtually impossible to locate them," Norstegard said. "You have to wait for the right water conditions and that can take time."

The cameras aboard ROVs are normally used only when the vehicle is close to wreckage because its lights can only illuminate a few meters in the dark depths. In especially murky water, the cameras become useless.

"In that case, you need to use side-scan sonars, which can give you a lateral picture of what is on the sea floor," said Martin Puggaard, chief inspector of air accidents at the Danish air safety agency.

In either case, surface conditions will also affect the recovery work. In particularly heavy swells, ROVs are difficult to control because the long cables that connect them to surface ships tend to jerk back and forth with the wave action.

Both investigators predicted that search crews would have to focus on recovering the black boxes and not on bringing up all the wreckage, as would be done in shallow coastal waters.

When they find more wreckage, searchers will probably divide the underwater debris field into grids and comb the area box by box as they did when TWA Flight 800 crashed off the coast of Long Island, N.Y., in 1996.

Some experts were more hopeful about the salvage effort.

Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va., said he expected crews to find the flight recorders, which are built to withstand intense water pressure.

"I would expect they'll dedicate the rather substantial resources of the French navy to this," Voss said. "I've got to figure this will go quickly. I'm hoping they'll have stuff up in a month, if not just a few weeks."

France has already dispatched a research ship equipped with unmanned submarines that can explore as deep as 19,600 feet.

On Wednesday, search vessels from several nations pushed toward the floating debris that included a 23-foot chunk of the plane and a 12-mile oil slick. Rescuers have found no signs of life from the jet that was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Although the crash was in international waters, France—as the nation where the plane was registered—has primary jurisdiction over the investigation, said Daniel Holtgen, a spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency based in Cologne, Germany.

The French may also designate other countries, such as Brazil, where the doomed flight originated, to take part. Officials at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have said they expect to join the search, too.
----------------
From Scott Bronstein
CNN Special Investigations Unit

(CNN) -- At least 12 airplanes shared the trans-Atlantic sky with doomed Air France Flight 447, but none reported any problems, deepening the mystery surrounding the cause of the plane's disappearance.

Image released by the Brazilian Air Force shows oil slicks in the water near a debris site.

Airlines confirmed that at least a dozen aircraft departed roughly at the same time and traversed approximately the same route, but did not report problematic weather conditions. This has led some aviation experts to suggest that technical problems on the airplane might be the main cause of the crash, though they may have combined with weather conditions to create serious problems.

The new information raises more questions than answers about Air France 447, believed to have plunged into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere between the coasts of Brazil and West Africa on May 31, presumably killing all 228 aboard. The plane's computer system reported a series of technical problems about four hours after takeoff and immediately after entering a large storm system a few hundred miles from the far eastern coast of Brazil.

Severe winds, updrafts and even lightning have been mentioned as possible causes of the crash, potentially triggering a failure of the plane's technical systems.

But aviation experts cautioned that weather alone would not normally cause a crash. Planes routinely fly through large storms, using the sensitive radar on board to navigate through specific storm cells. When conditions are severe enough, planes can easily deviate around or above storms, experts say.

In addition to Flight 447, Air France had four other Paris-bound flights that left in the same broad time frame from that part of the world, according to an airline spokesman. One flight left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at 4:20 p.m. At that same moment, another Air France flight left nearby Sao Paulo. A third Air France flight left Buenos Aires, Argentina, at 5:50 p.m., also heading for Paris. A final Air France flight left Sao Paulo at 7:10 p.m., almost exactly when the doomed flight took off from Rio.
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All of these flights took a similar route toward Paris, heading first toward Recife on the east coast of Brazil and then continuing northeast over the Atlantic. None of the other flights experienced anything unusual, the spokesman said. All arrived in Paris the next day, with no significant delays of any kind.

That same evening two Air Iberia flights bound for Madrid, Spain, left Brazil at about the same time as Flight 447; one departed from Rio de Janeiro and another from Sao Paulo, according to officials at Iberia. Those flights also reported no problems.

It was the same story for one British Airways flight and three Air TAM Brazil flights, all of which flew routes similar to the missing plane.
Although none of the other flights are known to have reported weather problems en route, aviation experts said weather can change suddenly and vary over short distances, so one plane might experience conditions far worse than another.

[David Guyatt]

As I said Pete, strange goings on...

[Peter Lemkin]

As I said Pete, strange goings on...

Agreed. Both threats and no reports of threats. Both finds of wreckage and claims no wreckage found. Now it seems NO idea where it went down - so how to find the flight recorders which [in air] one must be a few miles within...who knows how close in water! Again, would love to know who important was on that flight!!!!

[David Guyatt]

Well, this is a new twist. Nuke subs aren't usually tasked with locating commercial airliner wreckage are they...

But ho hum and hey, "false speed measurements" now seem to be the real cause of the "accident".

Now you see it, now you don't.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8085539.stm

Nuclear sub to join hunt for jet



A French nuclear submarine is being sent to help find an Air France plane which disappeared over the Atlantic.

French Defence Minister Herve Morin said the submarine had sonar equipment that could help locate the airliner's flight data recorders.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that debris salvaged from the sea was not from the Airbus jet that went missing on Monday.

Airbus has reissued guidelines to pilots after experts said the plane may have had false speed measurements.

A spokesman for the company said that a notice had been sent reminding Airbus crews worldwide what to do when speed indicators give conflicting read-outs.

Spokesman Justin Dubon said the readings meant that "the air speed of the aircraft was unclear".

He said that in such circumstances, flight crews should - if necessary - level off the plane and start troubleshooting procedures as detailed in operating manuals.

SEARCH FOR FLIGHT AF 447
1 June: Contact lost with plane over mid-Atlantic
2 June: First debris spotted from the air includes an airline seat. Brazilian defence minister says debris is from missing plane
3 June: More debris spotted, including a 7m-wide chunk of metal. Fuel slick seen on ocean surface
4 June: Buoys and pallet recovered from ocean said to be from plane. Officials later retract statement
The BBC's Tom Symonds says erratic speed readings could have been the result of heavy turbulence and might have caused the plane's automatic throttle to power up or down as it passed through heavy storms.

Meteorologists say the Air France Flight 447 had entered an unusual storm with 100mph (160km/h) updrafts that sucked water up from the ocean.

As the moisture reached the plane's high altitude it quickly froze in -40C temperatures. The updrafts would also have created dangerous turbulence, they say.

The Airbus A330 jet vanished over the Atlantic en-route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Monday with 228 people on board.

A small group of relatives of those on board the plane has gone to the north-eastern Brazilian city of Recife where the rescue operation is based. They are to be given a chance to tour the facility and to ask questions.

As the search continued on Friday, it was revealed that a wooden pallet and a fuel slick in the vicinity of the plane's last known position were not from the jet.

Brazilian air force official Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso contradicted earlier reports, saying "no material from the plane has been recovered".

The slick was most likely from a passing ship, he said.

Navy ships are reported to be scouring the ocean, about 1,100km (690 miles) north-east of Brazil's coast, in an effort to locate other debris spotted from the air on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Manslaughter inquiry

In addition to the nuclear submarine, a French ship equipped with two deep-sea research mini-submarines is on its way to the area.

The mini-submarines will be looking for the plane's flight data recorders, which are believed to be sitting on the ocean floor up to 6,000m (19,685ft) underwater.

Three more Brazilian boats are expected to arrive in the area in the next few days.

French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said the priority was looking for wreckage from the plane before it sinks or disappears.

French officials have said the flight data recorders, which could be deep under water, may never be found.

In another development on Friday, the Paris prosecutor's office opened a manslaughter investigation into the air crash.

It is a routine step taken by authorities in connection with the deaths of French citizens overseas.

[Peter Lemkin]

Add to the contradictions reports of fine weather and an unusual updraft storm - causing a reverse hail storm. Nuke sub to the rescue!....It might help locate the wreckage, but I don't believe it can go deep enough to get any - that would need a submersible built for great depth. Indeed a very strange event.....

[Magda Hassan]

Key figures in global battle against illegal arms trade lost in Air France crash
ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug traffickingFrom Andrew McLeod
AMID THE media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France's ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world's most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.
Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was travelling with his wife Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf wars waged by drug gangs in Rio's sprawling favelas.
Also travelling with Dreyfus on the doomed flight was his friend and colleague Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola. Both men were consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Survey said on its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100 countries to the cause of disarmament and development.
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Buenos Aires-born Dreyfus had been living in Rio since 2002, where he and his sociologist wife worked with the Brazilian NGO Viva Rio.
"Pablo will be remembered as a gentle and sensitive man with an upbeat sense of humour," said the Small Arms Survey. "He displayed an intellectual curiosity and a determined work ethic that excited and enthused all who worked with him."
According to the International Action Network on Small Arms Control (IANSA), Dreyfus's work was instrumental in the introduction of landmark small arms legislation in Brazil in 2003. Under this legislation, an online link was created between army and police databases listing production, imports and exports of arms and ammunition in Brazil.
Dreyfus was an advocate of the stringent labelling of ammunition by weapons firms, arguing that by clearly identifying ammunition not only by its producer but also its purchaser, the likelihood of weapons being sourced by criminals from corrupt police or armed forces personnel is greatly reduced.
Though a Brazilian referendum on the right to bear arms was rejected in 2005, Viva Rio says the campaign should be considered a success because half a million weapons were voluntarily handed in to the authorities. Anti-gun activists put the referendum defeat down to fears criminals would circumvent the law and continue to gain access to small arms the usual way - through Paraguay and other bordering countries. This was not an irrational fear: until 2004, when Paraguay bowed to Brazilian pressure, even foreign tourists were allowed to purchase small arms simply by presenting a photocopy of their identity card. Dreyfus knew that many of the weapons from the so-called tri-border area between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina were reaching Rio drug gangs.
When unidentified gunmen made off with a stash of hand grenades from an Argentine military garrison in 2006, Dreyfus deplored what he said was lax security at military depots across the world. "If a supermarket can keep control of the amount of peas it has in stock, surely a military organisation could and should be able to do the same with equal if not greater efficiency with its weapons," he said. "The key words are logisitics, control, security."
When Rio agents smashed a cell of drug traffickers who had sourced their weapons from the tri-border area, Dreyfus noted its leaders were prominent businessmen living in apartments in the plush Rio suburbs of Ipanema and São Corrado, "not in the favelas".
In a recent report posted on the Brazilian website Comunidade Segura (Safe Community), Dreyfus noted that the Brazilian arms firm CBC (Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos) had become one of the world's biggest ammunition producers by purchasing Germany's Metallwerk Elisenhutte Nassau (MEN) in 2007, and Sellier & Bellot (S&B) of the Czech Republic in March. This would not be particularly noteworthy but for the fact that CBC's exports had tapered off in recent years due to legislation restricting exports to Paraguay, arms that often found their way back into Brazil and on to the Rio drug gangs - the "boomerang effect", as Dreyfus called it. "The commercial export of weapons and ammunition from Brazil to the bordering countries stopped in 2001," wrote Dreyfus. "CBC lost commercial markets in Latin America, but Brazil won in public security."
However, manufacturers from other countries had moved in to fill the void, and before its purchase by CBC, S&B was already "one of the marks most currently apprehended" by Brazilian police. Dreyfus said that, in view of the fact the Czech Republic was bound by the EU Code of Conduct on weapons exports - which states that EU countries must "evaluate the existence of the risk that the armament can be diverted to undesirable final destinations", CBC should "consider the risk that some of these exports end up, via diversions, feeding violence in Brazil".
Though his focus was on Latin America, Dreyfus also advised the government of Mozambique and at the time of his death was preparing to do the same for the government of Angola, where stockpiles of weapons left over from the civil war continue to pose a security problem.
Dreyfus and Dreyer were on their way to Geneva to present the latest edition of the Small Arms Survey handbook, of which Dreyfus was a joint editor. It was to have been their latest step in their relentless fight against evil.
http://www.sundayherald.com/internationa...85.0.0.php



Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva greets French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in Rio de Janeiro, in December 2008. Sarkozy was there to sign an arms deal. (Ricardo Moraes/Associated Press)

[Peter Lemkin]

Key figures in global battle against illegal arms trade lost in Air France crash
ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug traffickingFrom Andrew McLeod
AMID THE media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France's ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world's most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.

Case closed, IMO. Bombed out of the sky by the arms trafficers. Only a matter or who exactly and how high up and from which governments. I doubt anyone will be convicted if it goes high up - and these sorts of things go to the top levels of some governments, including my own.