Posted on 06/17/2004 12:46:18 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
U.N. Official Suspended for Probing '94 Crash
Thursday, June 17, 2004
By Jonathan Hunt
UNITED NATIONS — A senior investigator in the United Nations' internal anti-corruption office has been suspended after trying to probe what he thought was the black box from a 1994 plane crash that killed the presidents of Rwanda (search) and Burundi.
Juvenal Habyarimana (search) of Rwanda and Burundi's Cyprian Ntayamira (search) were among the 10 people on the aircraft when it went down April 6, 1994. Rwanda's genocide began the evening the plane was shot down and many credit that incident with sparking the killing spree that left about 800,000 people dead in the tiny central African nation.
Francois Pascal, a senior investigator in the Office of Internal Oversight Services (search), was looking into the crash when he found that his boss, Undersecretary General Dileep Nair (search), recommended he be suspended. Pascal was suspended in April, a month after a black box was discovered at U.N. headquarters.
Earlier this year, an unidentified person discovered the flight recorder locked in a drawer in the U.N.'s air safety unit in New York and officials initially believe it came from the 1994 crash. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the discovery a "first-class foul-up."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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Ping.
See above links.
And Kerry wants us to do everything under the UN's approval!
Good grief. They must have something really serious to cover up to do this at the present time, when they are already being investigated for Oil for Food and Food for Sex.
Like involvement in the assassination plot, perhaps?
That is exactly why democrats WILL NOT speak of the UN and are happiest when John Kerry is in hiding. Thats truely pathetic.
Personally I think John Kerry is in a lot deeper trouble than liberals or the so called polls are willing to admit.
Assume it's not from the plane.
Then, what plane is it from? And why is it there?
Whenever a friend/colleague/relative tells me that our solutions to any problem involve the UN, I turn to that person and say "Can you list five success stories involving the UN that give you reason to believe they are an acceptable solution?"
For some reason, I've yet to get an answer!
Why does the UN have a black box in its drawers?
Will some intrepid reporter ask, "If so, from what plane did it come?" Or is today's media too spoonfed?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095725/posts
UN Finds Black Box Lost in Rwanda Genocide Probe
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A red-faced United Nations acknowledged on Thursday that an aircraft black box possibly linked to an air crash that triggered the 1994 genocide in Rwanda had turned up in a U.N. filing cabinet.
The Paris daily Le Monde reported this week that a black box from the Falcon 50 shot down by a rocket on April 6, 1994, killing the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, had been sent to U.N. headquarters in New York and was never seen again.
The newspaper accused the United Nations of obstructing a French investigation into the crash, which was widely blamed at the time for sparking the 1994 slaughter of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus by the French-backed Hutu regime then in power in Rwanda.
The genocide has been a major embarrassment for the United Nations and in particular for Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who led its peacekeeping operation at the time, as U.N. peacekeepers were unable to prevent the slaughter.
Asked about the article on Tuesday, U.N. chief spokesman Fred Eckhard flatly dismissed charges the United Nations was obstructing the probe or had the black box, joking, "I've got it right under the table here."
But two days later, an embarrassed Eckhard said the world body had indeed found a black box locked in a filing cabinet.
He said the device had been sent by diplomatic pouch to U.N. headquarters from Rwanda in 1994. But U.N. air safety experts had put it away in the filing cabinet after concluding it was not from the crashed plane because it was undamaged.
'FIRST-CLASS FOUL-UP'
"And because of that judgment, the air safety experts, after unsuccessfully trying to identify its source, put the black box in the file cabinet and did not report it up the chain of command," he said.
The United Nations does not ordinarily investigate air crashes, and current U.N. officials could not even say if the device was a cockpit voice recorder or a flight data recorder, Eckhard said.
Annan, asked about the discovery, said, "I must say, I was as surprised as you were to find out that a black box existed, much less in this building. From what I have picked up, it sounds like a real foul-up, a first-class foul-up."
"I don't think there has been any attempt to cover up," he said, adding that in his view, the U.N. legal office had been cooperating "very effectively" with the French probe.
U.N. officials would now give the device to outside experts to see if it did come from the downed Falcon. The U.N. inspector general would also investigate whether the matter was handled correctly at the time, Eckhard said.
The newspaper report was based on a six-year inquiry by French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who was asked to investigate by relatives of the plane's French crew.
Bruguiere faulted the United Nations for failing to open its own investigation into the plane's downing and trying to prevent the truth from coming out, the newspaper reported.
Bruguiere's main conclusion, according to the newspaper, was that Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, had ordered the downing of the plane near Kigali airport with Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian head of state Cyprien Ntaryamira on board.
Kagame's government has denied the report as "shameful and baseless."
It will be subjected to high intensity magnetic and electric fields, and determined to be untraceable.
ummm... cause she's african?
I have no idea.
This is a story just begging for some investigative journalism.
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