Sunday, May 14, 2006
Mystery Jet Update
Friday, June 17, 2005
Mystery Jet Update
It's been brought to my attention that the ever-informative Sharjah Airport online departures board shows that an Irbis Air Co. flight departed for nowhere else than Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan this morning. (Thanks, Hannah!) Further digging down the lists shows that, in fact, Irbis is running a regular service to the base, which has acquired an infamous reputation after two prisoners died in captivity there. There's a flight into SHJ at 0640 (BIS6345) and a flight to Bagram at 0900 daily, flight no. BIS6355. Furthermore, British Gulf International Airlines are back on the Baghdad and Kabul runs. Ex-Dubai, flights to Iraq are continuing under Irbis's ICAO code (BIS) although they are listed as Royal Brunei Airways. Royal Brunei's code is BI.
Nobody in their right minds thinks Irbis is anything other than one of the core Viktor Bout companies, including the United Nations, the British government, and the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. OFAC have put Irbis on their list of companies (See Viktory) whose assets are to be seized. I doubt, somehow, that the Irbis plane was impounded in Bagram. What the fucking fuck is wrong with these fucking people?
Elsewhere, you might like to scoot over to Carlos's, who has a wealth of information about the missing 727 and its ties to Imad Saba, and his ties to etc etc etc. Suffice it to say that I seem to recall seeing a DOD fuel contract for one of his firms mentioned in Carlos's story (see below), Air Van. I haven't substantiated it yet, but I'll check, and I'm fairly sure I saw one.
comments? | x
CW @ 3:33AM | 2005-06-21| permalink
hahaha. I think you can say that not only does the right hand not know what the left hand is doing, the left hand doesn't even know what it is doing either. And people wonder why they never found the missing jet...
Hannah K. O'Luthon @ 4:17PM | 2005-06-21| permalink
The Irbis flights to Bagram Air Base seem to have disappeared from the
Sharjah Departures site, although I wouldn't bet that they or "repaints"
of them have been completely discontinued. It's difficult not to conjecture
opiate smuggling, but, of course for now at least, that's pure conjecture.
In any case, for the time being it would seem that Alex can paste another
jet decal onto his monitor.
Meanwhile, there's something decidedly "funny" happening at Ras Al Khaimah
airport Sharjar's less infamous neighbor in the U.A.E. Astair Airline, ICAO code SUW, serves several Russian cities as well as Baku, Azerbaigian and Bishkek, Kyrgystan. It's fleet is reported as of Jan. 2005 to consist of 2 Antonov An24's and 1 Yakolev 42-D, but according to Ras Al Khaimah airport's site it flies an IL 18 twice a week from there to MKP. What's MKP? My (undoubtedly inept) Googling shows that to be the IATA airport code for the airport in Makemo, French Polynesia.
French Polynesia is over 15,000 km from the UAE, whilst a fully loaded and fueled IL18 has a range of at most 6500 km, so there is clearly something that doesn't jibe here, over and above the fact that a tiny Russian airline is supposedly running regular flights between the UAE and that major market which is French Polynesia. It may be of further interest that both Astair Airline and Expo Aviation (Pvt.) Limited of Sri Lanka share the IATA Code 8D with a Kodiak Island - Anchorage Alaska bush-pilot airline known, interestingly enough, as Servant Air. An Ilyushin 18D leased by Expo Aviation from well known Bout firm Phoenix Air crashed in Colombo, Sri Lanka in on Feb. 4, 2004. Where in God's name Ras Al Khaimah Flight SUW9200 is really headed remains to be clarified. Of course, all might be much less sinister than it appears, if there is some alternative explanation for the MKP airport code.
Ruud Leeuw @ 6:35PM | 2005-08-11| permalink
Posted soething on the forum www.aviatsiya.ru/forums/
and got this:
- MKP sounds like Maikop, capital city of Adygeya (Adygei) Republic (SW Russia) which has no official IATA code
- The Il-18 should be RA-75834
- I am not aware of a second An-24 with Astair (but can be wrong)
- Astair code *was* 8D and is now ZA
And also:
SUW is now the code for Interavia who took over Astair
http://www.aviatsiya.ru/forums/viewtopic.php?t=366
MKP is actually МКП which is Maikop (Майкоп) in Adygeya. МКП is the Russian code for the city, as it does not have an IATA code -- ICAO code is УРКМ (URKM)
It appears they still have the Il-18 and it is a cargo flight.
Steve Sadlov @ 6:56PM | 2006-04-21| permalink
Bout is more than likely still in a secret structure emanating from the Kremlin and part of SVR black ops. Which makes it all the more worrying that some idiots in both the UK and US naively believe him to be nothing more than a "post Soviet rogue" and therefore someone who can be dealt with. Oh sure, anyone can deal with the Devil, but the wisdom of that is suspect.
Just a thought. If the Russians wanted to outsource the production of things proscribed by treaties, and wanted to have "off the books" means of transport of such items on short notice, Bout would be the perfect man for that job from the Kremlin's perspective. Oh, but what do I know? .... :)
Original: http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/2005/06/mystery-jet-update.html
______________________________________________________________________________________
Missing 727: June 2005 Update
« H » email link
There has been a lot of new information related to the missing 727 lately - or related according to my theories, anyway. The details are so intricate and confusing that they are literally melting my tiny brain, but the bottom line is that the connection between N844AA and its twin sisters 3X-GDO and 3X-GDM has gotten stronger.
There have been a few more reports that the aircraft that crashed at Cotonou in December 2003 (UTA Flight 141) - which I still believe is the rosetta stone of the whole mystery - had "irregularities" associated with its registration and the serial numbers found on the fuselage. I believe, and the French accident investigation reports, that aircraft was 3X-GDO, serial number 21370, but some reports continue to associate serial number 21089 - which supposedly correlates to 3X-GDM - with the crashed aircraft. A lot of this new information is coming out of the Lebanese investigation into the crash.
That investigation led to the eventual arrest of Darwish Khazem, son of UTA Airlines President Ahmad Khazem, in Guinea with the intention of returning him to Lebanon for questioning about the crash. It is not clear to me that he ever made it back to Lebanon, where he first flew after the crash, only to make a hasty and surreptitious departure when he found out the Lebanese authorities were looking for him. He was onboard, and some reports say he was the UTA official who ordered the aircraft to take off heavily overloaded, leading to the crash.
The Khazem family who owned and operated UTA had leased 3X-GDO and 3X-GDM (discussed at length in my last post on the subject) from a mysterious, but apparently Victor-Bout-associated company called "Financial Advisory Group" of Miami and Sharjah, UAE. Financial Advisory Group has been associated (by common aircraft, for the most part) with BoutCos KAMAIR, East/West Airways, and Air Van, as well as with the still-mysterious Alpha-Omega Airways of Swaziland. But more on that in a moment.
The managing director of Financial Advisory Group has been reported in various sources (including my friend and fellow mystery-jet hunter Alex) as a fellow named Imad Saba. Imad Saba is described as a "Palestinian-American" and can be found on the web here. He is a VERY interesting fellow.
He reportedly lives in Miami (where the missing 727 N844AA originated before it went to Angola), where he is associated with something called "J. Taylor Investments", but works at the offices of the Victor Bout complex in Sharjah. I even found an Imad Saba who is a member of the "Don Shula 48 Ounce Club" - for eating a giant steak at a restaurant in Miami Lakes, very near Opa Locka - where the missing 727 originated.
So, giant steaks at Don Shula's aside - check out this thread from PPRUNE about our friend Mr. Saba. (Update: that thread was "edited" at PPRUNE since I published this post. See this one also. Or this one at Luchtzak Aviation.) The first thread says "Financial Advisory Group", Air Van, East/West, and IRS Airlines are all run by Mr. Saba out of the same office in Sharjah.
IRS Airlines? Where have we heard that before? IRS Airlines was the company that had been reported as having originally leased N844AA from Maury Joseph at Opa Locka.
Let's repeat for emphasis: The guy who originally made the deal for the missing N844AA with Maury Joseph's Aerospace Sales and Leasing in Miami is the same guy who leased 3X-GDO and 3X-GDM to UTA in Guinea.
Could it get any more interesting? Well lets see...
Saba is currently running Air Van, which is registered in Armenia, of all places. Who else registers aircraft in Armenia? Our buddy Victor Bout of course. And what kind of aircraft is he registering in Armenia for Air Van? 747s and 727s, reportedly. And where did Air Van get a 747? From Libyan Arab Airlines, of course, who have never operated a 747, and for some reason registered the one they have in Swaziland. Swaziland? You mean the same Swaziland where Saba's Financial Advisory Group's 3X-GDM was registered after it left UTA (as 3D-AAK), but was stored in Libya wearing a Libyan Arab Airlines paint? The same Swaziland where "Alpha Omega Airways" who provided the aircrew and documentation for the crashed 3X-GDO is registered? Yup, that Swaziland.
Confused yet? My itty bitty brain is jello - but what we have here is a clear connection between the missing 727, its twin sisters that were flown for UTA, the Victor Bout network, and Libya, all via the enterprising Mr. Saba.
Early on I speculated about IRS Airlines possible role in the disappearance of N844AA, before zeroing in on "Financial Advisory Group" and UTA. Imagine my delight to learn they are one and the same.
So..............
The latest version of my thesis about what happened to N844AA is that Imad Saba leased it (or perhaps only planned to lease it) from Maury Joseph, but his plan to operate it fell through and Keith Irwin came in with an alternative plan to fly in in Angola. But because of Irwin's bad decision to land it at Luanda, it was impounded and basically held for ransom by the Angolan government. After months of accruing fines and fees in Angola, Maury Joseph hired Ben Padilla to get it airworthy, with the intent of flying it out. But the Angolans wanted a lot of money to let the plane out of hock, so Joseph made a deal with Imad Saba - perhaps selling the plane to him outright at a cut-rate price.
But Saba couldn't get it out of Angola legally either, without paying the fines, so he sent one or two Libyan pilots down to Luanda to meet Ben Padilla, and take off in the plane while Padilla was supposedly taking it out for a maintenance turn. This may or may not have been with the cooperation of Ben Padilla.
Once out of Angola, the plane was flown to somewhere in the Congo or South Africa (or maybe Swaziland???), where it was disguised as one of Saba's other 727s - either one of the two that were eventually operated for UTA (my first guess), or one of the other IRS Airlines birds (5N-RIR or 5N-AKR). Heck it could have done both by now.
It was then flown as a "substitute" for one of the others, sharing the registration of a different aircraft. In this role it may have been involved in other types of illicit activity - smuggling, or possibly even terrorism.
But it's still out there, and Imad Saba - reportedly an American citizen - knows where it is. And more importantly, he knows what happened to Ben Padilla.
posted Thursday, 16 June 2005
Hannah K. O'Luthon made this comment,
Thanks for excellent reporting. There are certainly a lot of "striking coincidences".
comment added :: 21st June 2005, 04:08 GMT-05
MARCO made this comment,
Dear Ciolleague: I want to know if it is posible to make some thing for get back my money from Imad Saba. I was working for him,I dont wana know nothing about him,but I wan to get my money.That is my slaries,I couldnt get yet until now. If you want to contac me,please be free to sent me letter to do something. Regards. Marco.
comment added :: 8th July 2005, 22:29 GMT-05
aviator_2006 made this comment,
I can tell you that you are making alot of assumptions in your creative and elaborate piece of work. Some things mentioned are facts but alot of the associations you have made are not. The lebanese confirmed the plane that crashed in Cotonou is not the missing 727 Flown by Ben Padilla. If an american citizen was involved with this Victor Bout who you say sell guns to Osama im sure he would be jailed or worse by the US government. And there no longer are any sanctions on Libya so flying there if they did is not as shady an action as you make it seem.
comment added :: 19th August 2005, 13:54 GMT-05
AVIATOR_2006 made this comment,
here is a blog bysome one who did a whole lot of research that helps prove those 727's are different aircraft. http://www.otwa.com/community/ showthread.php?t=14340
comment added :: 22nd August 2005, 03:11 GMT-05
Carlos W made this comment,
I love it when I get new comments on my old 727 posts!
Aviator_2006: I appreciate your interest but I'm not sure I got my point across very well. This stuff is so complicated that it is very hard to tell the story simply and clearly.
I never thought that the aircraft that crashed at Cotonou was N844AA. It was definitely 3X-GDO - s/n 21370 (N844AA is s/n 20985). But I do think the aircraft are connected. I think that N844AA was used in a "shell game" with the two identical UTA aircraft - they are all ex-AA 727-223/adv's, and the only differences between them are small variations in the paint. (Or N844AA may have only been used for parts for the other two.)
But the connections between the two UTA aircraft and the missing plane are too many to ignore and I believe UTA is the key to finding 844AA. And we would never have gotten all the info about UTA except for the crash of -GDO at Cotonou.
You should read all the 727 posts (links to the right) to get a more complete idea how the investigation has evolved.
Also the US person associated with Victor Bout is Rich Chichakli - he was listed along with Victor as a "Specially Designated National" by the Treasury Department for his association with terrorism and subsequently all his assets in the US were seized. He has a web site to complain about it: www.chichakli.com. Read all about it for yourself.
comment added :: 22nd August 2005, 21:37 GMT-05
Carlos W made this comment,
Also I appreciate the link. I read that post and don't disagree with a word of it - in fact it looks like we used some of the same sources. But there are a lot more details that have come to light since that post (in Mar 04) which I've detailed in my own posts since then.
The involvement of Imad Saba is one of the biggest ones.
Mystery Jet Update
It's been brought to my attention that the ever-informative Sharjah Airport online departures board shows that an Irbis Air Co. flight departed for nowhere else than Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan this morning. (Thanks, Hannah!) Further digging down the lists shows that, in fact, Irbis is running a regular service to the base, which has acquired an infamous reputation after two prisoners died in captivity there. There's a flight into SHJ at 0640 (BIS6345) and a flight to Bagram at 0900 daily, flight no. BIS6355. Furthermore, British Gulf International Airlines are back on the Baghdad and Kabul runs. Ex-Dubai, flights to Iraq are continuing under Irbis's ICAO code (BIS) although they are listed as Royal Brunei Airways. Royal Brunei's code is BI.
Nobody in their right minds thinks Irbis is anything other than one of the core Viktor Bout companies, including the United Nations, the British government, and the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. OFAC have put Irbis on their list of companies (See Viktory) whose assets are to be seized. I doubt, somehow, that the Irbis plane was impounded in Bagram. What the fucking fuck is wrong with these fucking people?
Elsewhere, you might like to scoot over to Carlos's, who has a wealth of information about the missing 727 and its ties to Imad Saba, and his ties to etc etc etc. Suffice it to say that I seem to recall seeing a DOD fuel contract for one of his firms mentioned in Carlos's story (see below), Air Van. I haven't substantiated it yet, but I'll check, and I'm fairly sure I saw one.
comments? | x
CW @ 3:33AM | 2005-06-21| permalink
hahaha. I think you can say that not only does the right hand not know what the left hand is doing, the left hand doesn't even know what it is doing either. And people wonder why they never found the missing jet...
Hannah K. O'Luthon @ 4:17PM | 2005-06-21| permalink
The Irbis flights to Bagram Air Base seem to have disappeared from the
Sharjah Departures site, although I wouldn't bet that they or "repaints"
of them have been completely discontinued. It's difficult not to conjecture
opiate smuggling, but, of course for now at least, that's pure conjecture.
In any case, for the time being it would seem that Alex can paste another
jet decal onto his monitor.
Meanwhile, there's something decidedly "funny" happening at Ras Al Khaimah
airport Sharjar's less infamous neighbor in the U.A.E. Astair Airline, ICAO code SUW, serves several Russian cities as well as Baku, Azerbaigian and Bishkek, Kyrgystan. It's fleet is reported as of Jan. 2005 to consist of 2 Antonov An24's and 1 Yakolev 42-D, but according to Ras Al Khaimah airport's site it flies an IL 18 twice a week from there to MKP. What's MKP? My (undoubtedly inept) Googling shows that to be the IATA airport code for the airport in Makemo, French Polynesia.
French Polynesia is over 15,000 km from the UAE, whilst a fully loaded and fueled IL18 has a range of at most 6500 km, so there is clearly something that doesn't jibe here, over and above the fact that a tiny Russian airline is supposedly running regular flights between the UAE and that major market which is French Polynesia. It may be of further interest that both Astair Airline and Expo Aviation (Pvt.) Limited of Sri Lanka share the IATA Code 8D with a Kodiak Island - Anchorage Alaska bush-pilot airline known, interestingly enough, as Servant Air. An Ilyushin 18D leased by Expo Aviation from well known Bout firm Phoenix Air crashed in Colombo, Sri Lanka in on Feb. 4, 2004. Where in God's name Ras Al Khaimah Flight SUW9200 is really headed remains to be clarified. Of course, all might be much less sinister than it appears, if there is some alternative explanation for the MKP airport code.
Ruud Leeuw @ 6:35PM | 2005-08-11| permalink
Posted soething on the forum www.aviatsiya.ru/forums/
and got this:
- MKP sounds like Maikop, capital city of Adygeya (Adygei) Republic (SW Russia) which has no official IATA code
- The Il-18 should be RA-75834
- I am not aware of a second An-24 with Astair (but can be wrong)
- Astair code *was* 8D and is now ZA
And also:
SUW is now the code for Interavia who took over Astair
http://www.aviatsiya.ru/forums/viewtopic.php?t=366
MKP is actually МКП which is Maikop (Майкоп) in Adygeya. МКП is the Russian code for the city, as it does not have an IATA code -- ICAO code is УРКМ (URKM)
It appears they still have the Il-18 and it is a cargo flight.
Steve Sadlov @ 6:56PM | 2006-04-21| permalink
Bout is more than likely still in a secret structure emanating from the Kremlin and part of SVR black ops. Which makes it all the more worrying that some idiots in both the UK and US naively believe him to be nothing more than a "post Soviet rogue" and therefore someone who can be dealt with. Oh sure, anyone can deal with the Devil, but the wisdom of that is suspect.
Just a thought. If the Russians wanted to outsource the production of things proscribed by treaties, and wanted to have "off the books" means of transport of such items on short notice, Bout would be the perfect man for that job from the Kremlin's perspective. Oh, but what do I know? .... :)
Original: http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/2005/06/mystery-jet-update.html
______________________________________________________________________________________
Missing 727: June 2005 Update
« H » email link
There has been a lot of new information related to the missing 727 lately - or related according to my theories, anyway. The details are so intricate and confusing that they are literally melting my tiny brain, but the bottom line is that the connection between N844AA and its twin sisters 3X-GDO and 3X-GDM has gotten stronger.
There have been a few more reports that the aircraft that crashed at Cotonou in December 2003 (UTA Flight 141) - which I still believe is the rosetta stone of the whole mystery - had "irregularities" associated with its registration and the serial numbers found on the fuselage. I believe, and the French accident investigation reports, that aircraft was 3X-GDO, serial number 21370, but some reports continue to associate serial number 21089 - which supposedly correlates to 3X-GDM - with the crashed aircraft. A lot of this new information is coming out of the Lebanese investigation into the crash.
That investigation led to the eventual arrest of Darwish Khazem, son of UTA Airlines President Ahmad Khazem, in Guinea with the intention of returning him to Lebanon for questioning about the crash. It is not clear to me that he ever made it back to Lebanon, where he first flew after the crash, only to make a hasty and surreptitious departure when he found out the Lebanese authorities were looking for him. He was onboard, and some reports say he was the UTA official who ordered the aircraft to take off heavily overloaded, leading to the crash.
The Khazem family who owned and operated UTA had leased 3X-GDO and 3X-GDM (discussed at length in my last post on the subject) from a mysterious, but apparently Victor-Bout-associated company called "Financial Advisory Group" of Miami and Sharjah, UAE. Financial Advisory Group has been associated (by common aircraft, for the most part) with BoutCos KAMAIR, East/West Airways, and Air Van, as well as with the still-mysterious Alpha-Omega Airways of Swaziland. But more on that in a moment.
The managing director of Financial Advisory Group has been reported in various sources (including my friend and fellow mystery-jet hunter Alex) as a fellow named Imad Saba. Imad Saba is described as a "Palestinian-American" and can be found on the web here. He is a VERY interesting fellow.
He reportedly lives in Miami (where the missing 727 N844AA originated before it went to Angola), where he is associated with something called "J. Taylor Investments", but works at the offices of the Victor Bout complex in Sharjah. I even found an Imad Saba who is a member of the "Don Shula 48 Ounce Club" - for eating a giant steak at a restaurant in Miami Lakes, very near Opa Locka - where the missing 727 originated.
So, giant steaks at Don Shula's aside - check out this thread from PPRUNE about our friend Mr. Saba. (Update: that thread was "edited" at PPRUNE since I published this post. See this one also. Or this one at Luchtzak Aviation.) The first thread says "Financial Advisory Group", Air Van, East/West, and IRS Airlines are all run by Mr. Saba out of the same office in Sharjah.
IRS Airlines? Where have we heard that before? IRS Airlines was the company that had been reported as having originally leased N844AA from Maury Joseph at Opa Locka.
Let's repeat for emphasis: The guy who originally made the deal for the missing N844AA with Maury Joseph's Aerospace Sales and Leasing in Miami is the same guy who leased 3X-GDO and 3X-GDM to UTA in Guinea.
Could it get any more interesting? Well lets see...
Saba is currently running Air Van, which is registered in Armenia, of all places. Who else registers aircraft in Armenia? Our buddy Victor Bout of course. And what kind of aircraft is he registering in Armenia for Air Van? 747s and 727s, reportedly. And where did Air Van get a 747? From Libyan Arab Airlines, of course, who have never operated a 747, and for some reason registered the one they have in Swaziland. Swaziland? You mean the same Swaziland where Saba's Financial Advisory Group's 3X-GDM was registered after it left UTA (as 3D-AAK), but was stored in Libya wearing a Libyan Arab Airlines paint? The same Swaziland where "Alpha Omega Airways" who provided the aircrew and documentation for the crashed 3X-GDO is registered? Yup, that Swaziland.
Confused yet? My itty bitty brain is jello - but what we have here is a clear connection between the missing 727, its twin sisters that were flown for UTA, the Victor Bout network, and Libya, all via the enterprising Mr. Saba.
Early on I speculated about IRS Airlines possible role in the disappearance of N844AA, before zeroing in on "Financial Advisory Group" and UTA. Imagine my delight to learn they are one and the same.
So..............
The latest version of my thesis about what happened to N844AA is that Imad Saba leased it (or perhaps only planned to lease it) from Maury Joseph, but his plan to operate it fell through and Keith Irwin came in with an alternative plan to fly in in Angola. But because of Irwin's bad decision to land it at Luanda, it was impounded and basically held for ransom by the Angolan government. After months of accruing fines and fees in Angola, Maury Joseph hired Ben Padilla to get it airworthy, with the intent of flying it out. But the Angolans wanted a lot of money to let the plane out of hock, so Joseph made a deal with Imad Saba - perhaps selling the plane to him outright at a cut-rate price.
But Saba couldn't get it out of Angola legally either, without paying the fines, so he sent one or two Libyan pilots down to Luanda to meet Ben Padilla, and take off in the plane while Padilla was supposedly taking it out for a maintenance turn. This may or may not have been with the cooperation of Ben Padilla.
Once out of Angola, the plane was flown to somewhere in the Congo or South Africa (or maybe Swaziland???), where it was disguised as one of Saba's other 727s - either one of the two that were eventually operated for UTA (my first guess), or one of the other IRS Airlines birds (5N-RIR or 5N-AKR). Heck it could have done both by now.
It was then flown as a "substitute" for one of the others, sharing the registration of a different aircraft. In this role it may have been involved in other types of illicit activity - smuggling, or possibly even terrorism.
But it's still out there, and Imad Saba - reportedly an American citizen - knows where it is. And more importantly, he knows what happened to Ben Padilla.
posted Thursday, 16 June 2005
Hannah K. O'Luthon made this comment,
Thanks for excellent reporting. There are certainly a lot of "striking coincidences".
comment added :: 21st June 2005, 04:08 GMT-05
MARCO made this comment,
Dear Ciolleague: I want to know if it is posible to make some thing for get back my money from Imad Saba. I was working for him,I dont wana know nothing about him,but I wan to get my money.That is my slaries,I couldnt get yet until now. If you want to contac me,please be free to sent me letter to do something. Regards. Marco.
comment added :: 8th July 2005, 22:29 GMT-05
aviator_2006 made this comment,
I can tell you that you are making alot of assumptions in your creative and elaborate piece of work. Some things mentioned are facts but alot of the associations you have made are not. The lebanese confirmed the plane that crashed in Cotonou is not the missing 727 Flown by Ben Padilla. If an american citizen was involved with this Victor Bout who you say sell guns to Osama im sure he would be jailed or worse by the US government. And there no longer are any sanctions on Libya so flying there if they did is not as shady an action as you make it seem.
comment added :: 19th August 2005, 13:54 GMT-05
AVIATOR_2006 made this comment,
here is a blog bysome one who did a whole lot of research that helps prove those 727's are different aircraft. http://www.otwa.com/community/ showthread.php?t=14340
comment added :: 22nd August 2005, 03:11 GMT-05
Carlos W made this comment,
I love it when I get new comments on my old 727 posts!
Aviator_2006: I appreciate your interest but I'm not sure I got my point across very well. This stuff is so complicated that it is very hard to tell the story simply and clearly.
I never thought that the aircraft that crashed at Cotonou was N844AA. It was definitely 3X-GDO - s/n 21370 (N844AA is s/n 20985). But I do think the aircraft are connected. I think that N844AA was used in a "shell game" with the two identical UTA aircraft - they are all ex-AA 727-223/adv's, and the only differences between them are small variations in the paint. (Or N844AA may have only been used for parts for the other two.)
But the connections between the two UTA aircraft and the missing plane are too many to ignore and I believe UTA is the key to finding 844AA. And we would never have gotten all the info about UTA except for the crash of -GDO at Cotonou.
You should read all the 727 posts (links to the right) to get a more complete idea how the investigation has evolved.
Also the US person associated with Victor Bout is Rich Chichakli - he was listed along with Victor as a "Specially Designated National" by the Treasury Department for his association with terrorism and subsequently all his assets in the US were seized. He has a web site to complain about it: www.chichakli.com. Read all about it for yourself.
comment added :: 22nd August 2005, 21:37 GMT-05
Carlos W made this comment,
Also I appreciate the link. I read that post and don't disagree with a word of it - in fact it looks like we used some of the same sources. But there are a lot more details that have come to light since that post (in Mar 04) which I've detailed in my own posts since then.
The involvement of Imad Saba is one of the biggest ones.
# posted by Always @ 9:52 AM 
