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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 2 - 8 November 2000 Issue No. 506 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 2 - 8 November 2000 Issue No. 506
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region Interview International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Loss compounded
THE 31ST of October marked the first anniversary of the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 217 persons on board, Amira Ibrahim reports. On Tuesday, 12 families of Egyptians who died in the crash off the US coast headed to Rhode Island where a two-day memorial service was being held.
Families had asked EgyptAir to facilitate their attendance of the ceremony and, following a long silence, the airline agreed at the last minute to fly victims' relatives to the United States free of charge. Upon leaving Cairo, relatives expressed anger for EgyptAir's behaviour. Some of them initiated legal action against EgyptAir, accusing the company of discriminating between relatives living in Cairo, whom it was reluctant to fly for free, and those living in the US, for whom free transport was provided to Rhode Island.
According to one of the relatives, he only found out about the EgyptAir offer from newspapers and complained that no genuine effort had been made to organise the trip.
EgyptAir shelved plans to hold its own memorial service after families said they would boycott the event in protest against its earlier refusal to fly them to the US ceremony.
Injy, the daughter of plane captain Ahmed El-Habashi, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the company refused to build a memorial for the crew who were killed in the crash in front of the company's headquarters at Cairo airport. In addition to disillusionment with treatment at home, the victims' families are still up against what they believe to be an inadequate and unfair investigation. Omayma El-Batouti, the co-pilot's widow, who refused to go to the US ceremony, accused US investigators and the US media of making unfair and hasty charges against her husband, accusing him of deliberately crashing the plane.
At home, a memorial service was held on Sunday at a Cairo hotel and the head of the Egyptian investigating team, Mohsen El-Messeiri, who attended the ceremony, asserted that his team provided evidence to refute the suicide theory.
Two months ago, families of the victims were summoned to conduct more DNA tests in order to help identify the remains of the victims. Again, EgyptAir did not inform relatives of the required tests and they had to seek information from the US embassy and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
