Egyptair Pilot Crashed Plane To Kill 33 Counter-insurgent Traitors To Islam

by Robin Hood

EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT
By Martin Mann
December 18, 2000

Having left New York's Kennedy airport after midnight on Oct. 31, 1999, Egyptair Flight 990 was cruising at 33,000 feet over
the Atlantic Ocean at 1:49 a.m. when one of the pilots, alone at the controls, suddenly sent the Boeing 767 into a steep dive,
cut off the engines, and uttered a last prayer as the giant aircraft plunged into the ocean, killing all 217 people aboard.
Those are the conclusions of a year-long investigation into the tragic crash conducted by the U.S. National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the FBI. But key excerpts from their files suggest that

the findings of these American authorities have never been made public in full, or even officially acknowledged.
The reason: "outraged" protests by the Egyptian government.
Top Egyptian spokesman rejected the U.S. conclusion that Flight 990 was intentionally downed by one of its pilots so
vehemently that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took charge of the case and ordered some of the evidence turned up
by American investigators suppressed.
Mrs. Albright, said the important point was to avoid a break with Egypt over this problem," said a former FBI inspector, who
is now a private security consultant in New Jersey. "Apparently {Egyptian President Hosni} Mubarak intervened in the case
personally and demanded that the Clinton administration avoid issuing a final report on this disaster until the Egyptians have
concluded their own investigation. As of now, they say they still have a lot of work to do on it."
But the evidence turned up by U.S. investigators conclusively demonstrated that it was one of the Egyptair pilots, Gamil
al-Batouti, 59, a veteran airman and former flight instructor, who intentionally sent Flight 990 into its fatal nosedive.
Sitting in the rear of the plane as one of the relief pilots scheduled to take his turn hours later as Flight 990 droned on toward
Cairo, Batouti entered the cockpit when the chief pilot, Captain Ahmed Al-Habashi, briefly left it. Batouti abruptly ordered
the co-pilot at the controls, Adel Anwar, to leave.
"I'm going to fly this thing now," Batouti told Anwar.
When First Lietenant Anwar protested, noting that it was not yet time for Batouti to take over, the older captain pulled rank
on the junior co-pilot.
"What, you won't get up?" he shouted, "I'm telling you, you will get up!"
The younger man finally obeyed Batouti and left the cockpit to complain about the incident to chief pilot Al-Habashi. Their
conversations have been preserved on the planes's voice recorder.
As soon as he was alone at the controls, Batouti switched off the autopilot. Uttering a prayer devout Mulims intone in crisis,
"Tawakkaltu ala Allah," that is "I trust in God," Batouti sent the plane into a steep nosedive, screaming toward the ocean at
almost the speed of sound.
At this point, Chief Pilot al-Habashi burst back into the cockpit.
U.S. investigators have concluded that Captain Habashi was making a last minute effort to pull the plane out of its dive while
Batouti was determined to crash it.
CONFIRMED
To understand what happened, it is necessary to recall that the Egyptian government has been waging a war of violent
repression against Muslim activists. the Egyptian military was in charge of the mass roundups, brutal interrogation, arbitrary
imprisonment, torture and occasional murder of Islamic sympathizers.
Batouti, like millions of his devout fellow Muslims was incensed and outraged by this campaign of terror, sources close to him
have told the FBI.
In the evening of Oct, 31, he seemed depressed to learn that most of the first-class section of Flight 990 would be occupied by
33 Egyptian officers, returning home after attending "refresher courses" in counter-insurgency techniques at CIA
headquarters in Langley, Va.
"Under the corrupt and dictatorial regime of Mubarak, Egypt has become a country at war with itself," said Dr. Roulot Imay,
the noted Middle Eastern sociologist. "Batouti must have viewed the officers on his plane as the enemies of his people and of
his Muslim faith-he may have considered them torturers and murderers, returning home to energize the repression of Islam
with new techniques taught them by U.S. instructors. It may well have motivated him to do what he did-utter a last prayer,
and bury all of them under the waves."
For years, Egypt has been paid $3 billion annually in "foreign aid" to keep it supporting Israel. This has turned the Egyptian
government into one of the most terroristic and brutal regimes in the world.
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Posted on Dec 13, 2000, 3:50 PM

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