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news without borders
FERNANDO DE NORONHA (Brazil): Sev-
enteen bodies recovered from a remote part
of the Atlantic where an Air France jet came
down a week ago were being transported by
ship yesterday to this Brazilian archipelago,
officials said. Those remains, and dozens of
structural components from the plane also
plucked from the waves, were expected to
arrive in Fernando de Noronha today.
From the archipelago, the bodies would be
flown to the mainland coastal city of Recife
for identification using dental records and
DNA from relatives, air force spokesman Lt-
Col Henry Munhoz told reporters on Sunday
in Recife.
Brazilian and French troops continued
to scour the crash zone 1,100km off Brazil’s
northeast coast for more bodies and pieces
of wreckage.
A French military nuclear submarine was
expected to arrive in the area tomorrow to
hunt for the elusive black boxes from Air
France flight AF 447, which came down on
June 1 with 228 people on board as it was
flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
Homing beacons on the data devices,
believed to lie on the sea floor at a depth of
up to 6,000m, will cease to operate in three
weeks.
The US Navy said on Sunday it would send
two towable pinger locators and a crew of
around 20 to the scene later this week, in the
hope of finding the data recorders.
“The first ship should head to the scene
tomorrow,” said Pentagon spokesman and US
navy commander Jeffrey Gordon. “They can
be used for locating submarines or anything
under the water that can emit a sound,” he
said.
The equipment can track sounds down to
a depth of 6km.
If the voice and data recorders are found,
a French research sub – the same one that
has explored the wreck of the Titanic – will
be deployed to recover them. That small sub,
the Nautile, is also expected to arrive within
days.
Brazilian and French officials said there
17 bodies recovered
from Air France crash
was no hope of finding survivors from the
downed plane. The disaster is the worst avia-
tion accident since 2001, and unprecedented
in Air France’s 75-year history.
No distress call was received from the
flight crew of the doomed plane.
Early suspicions are focusing on the Air-
bus A330’s airspeed sensors, which appeared
to have malfunctioned in the minutes before
the catastrophe according to some of 24 auto-
matic data warnings sent by the plane.
Investigators are looking at whether the
sensors, known as pitots, could have iced
over, possibly leading the Air France pilots to
fly into a storm in the zone that day without
knowing their airspeed.
Such a scenario could have resulted in
“two bad consequences for the survival of
the plane,” France’s transport minister Domi-
nique Bussereau told French radio.
They were, he said: “Too low a speed,
which can cause it to stall, or too high a
speed, which can lead to the plane ripping
up as it approached the speed of sound, as
the outer skin is not designed to resist such
speed.”
The problem with the pitots had been
known for some time, possibly since 1996,
according to the French weekly newspaper
the Journal du Dimanche.
Air France said on Saturday it had ac-
celerated plans begun in April 27 to replace
the monitoring units in its jets after noticing
problems with airspeed information on its
Airbus A330s and A340s since May last year.
It insisted in a statement that this should
not be taken as prejudging the result of the
crash investigation.
Following the crash, planemaker Airbus
Duch says babies were
‘smashed’ against trees
PHNOM PENH: The former jail chief of the Khmer
Rouge regime told Cambodia’s UN-backed war
crimes trial yesterday that his staff had murdered
babies by smashing them against trees at a “kill-
ing field”. Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his
nom de guerre Duch, is on trial for overseeing
the torture and extermination of 15,000 people
who passed through the hardline communist
movement’s notorious Tuol Sleng prison.
“The horrendous images of those babies
smashed against trees, yes, that was done by my
subordinates,” Duch said, referring to paintings
depicting the atrocities committed by members
of the 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge regime.
“I myself do not blame my subordinates,
because they worked under me. I am criminally
responsible,” the 66-year-old added.
The former maths teacher, wearing a grey
short-sleeved shirt, was responding to prosecu-
tion questions about the regime’s policies at Tuol
Sleng, where prisoners were often accompanied
65 still missing as China
landslide rescue continues
BEIJING: Rescuers digging through landslide
debris in southwestern China have found seven
bodies but 65 people were still missing as rains
threatened search efforts, the government said
yesterday.
Rescuers had resorted to blasting through
debris at the landslide scene in the Chongqing
region in a frantic bid to find survivors of Friday’s
disaster, in which a whole mountainside collapsed
onto several homes and an iron ore mine.
Rescuers had carried out five such explo-
sions over the weekend in an effort to locate the
entrance to the iron ore mine in Wulong county
where 27 miners are feared trapped.
“The latest information is there were seven
bodies found last night (Sunday) so there are 65
missing at present,” a Chongqing government
spokesman who gave only his surname, said Li
by phone. Another spokesman, Ai Yang, said on
Sunday that hopes of finding any survivors were
dim.
theSun | TUESDAY JUNE 9 2009
also warned pilots to review their proce-
dure to cope with this problem. France is
in charge of the overall investigation into
the accident, and on Saturday French Prime
Minister Francois Fillon named a special
“ambassador” to oversee relations with the
families of those killed on the flight.
The ambassador, Pierre-Jean Vandoorne,
currently serves as deputy inspector-general
at the French Foreign Ministry.
Brazilian authorities are leading the ef-
forts to recover bodies and debris. The first
two bodies found were those of two men
hauled up on Saturday.
Of the 15 found on Sunday, eight were
recovered by a French navy frigate which
had just joined the search operation.
A Brazilian navy vessel collected the oth-
er nine, comprising four men, four women
and one body in such bad condition it was
impossible to determine their sex. – AFP
A piece of debris
from Air France flight
AF447 is seen on the
deck of a Brazilian
Navy vessel after
being picked up
out of the Atlantic
Ocean.
REUTERSPIX
by their children. Duch apologised at his trial in
March, saying he accepted blame for the extermi-
nation of thousands of people at the prison, which
served as the centre of the 1975-1979 regime’s
security apparatus.
But he has denied prosecutors’ claims that he
played a central role in the Khmer Rouge’s iron-
fisted rule, and maintains he only tortured two
people himself and never personally executed
anyone. Duch faces life in jail if convicted by the
court, which does not have the power to impose
the death penalty.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998
and many believe the UN-sponsored tribunal is
the last chance to find justice for victims of the
regime, which killed up to two million people. The
tribunal was formed in 2006 after nearly a decade
of wrangling between the United Nations and the
Cambodian government, and is expected to next
year to begin the trial of four other senior Khmer
Rouge leaders also in detention. – AFP
“We still are holding out hope for those min-
ers trapped underground, but there are only faint
hopes for those buried under rubble,” Ai said.
Rescue efforts have focused on the mine
where the miners were working when up to 12
million cubic metres of boulders and rock crashed
down from Wulong mountain, Ai said.
With homes also buried, there were fears the
rescue work would be hampered by rains forecast
over the next several days.
State-run China Central Television reported
yesterday morning that rescue work had been
temporarily suspended due to the rains.
Li, the government spokesman, said he could
not confirm that report. The massive slide also
dammed up the Wujiang river, leading to fears that
rising waters on a landslide-formed lake could
burst, sending debris flooding down onto commu-
nities below. An investigation has begun into the
cause of the disaster, which also cut power lines
and communications in several areas. – AFP