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CRASH

Probe to reveal ‘exact circumstances’ of Rio-Paris crash

Investigators said they will unveil new findings on Friday revealing the "exact circumstances" of the deadly crash of an Air France jet in the Atlantic in 2009.

The French aviation authority BEA said Monday it will make its third formal report from its investigation into how the plane crashed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board.

“This report will present the exact circumstances of the accident with an initial analysis and some new findings based on the data recovered from the flight recorders,” it said in a statement.

It added that it would brief the media in Paris at 2:30pm on Friday.

According to information from the recorders already released by the BEA, the pilots saw conflicting speeds on their instruments as the plane stalled and fell into the sea.

An interim inquiry had pointed to an icing problem with the probes measuring air speed but there has still been no definitive conclusion as to the cause of the crash.

The new elements in Friday’s report will “present the different chains of events that led to the accident” but will not formally establish the cause, a BEA spokeswoman told AFP.

“These first points of analysis will allow us to indicate the failures that led to the accident, but not their cause,” she said. A further final report is due later.

According to several experts, the deactivation of the autopilot could have been caused by the icing up of the air speed probes, known as Pitots.

Since the accident, Air France has replaced the Pitots on its Airbus fleet with a newer model.

Both companies are being investigated for alleged manslaughter in connection with the crash.

Pilot’s unions and some of the victims’ families have accused the airline of reacting too slowly to safety warnings but both Airbus and Air France insist they reacted properly.

“We are waiting for more information on the circumstances of the accident, how it took place and above all the technical state of the aircraft during the flight’s last moments,” said Robert Soulas of a victims’ families association.

“What has been released by the BEA has been very fragmented and has not allowed us to fully understand the situation,” he told AFP.

It took investigators nearly two years to salvage the black-box flight recorders from the wreck on the ocean floor in May.

Rescue workers recovered 50 bodies in the days immediately after the crash and this year retrieved a further 104, which were returned to France last month. More than 70 could not be recovered.

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POLICE

Six injured after man causes series of Berlin Autobahn crashes in ‘possible Islamist attack’

A man has caused a series of motorway accidents in Berlin, injuring six people including three seriously in what German prosecutors Wednesday described as an Islamist act.

Six injured after man causes series of Berlin Autobahn crashes in 'possible Islamist attack'
Investigators working at Berlin's A100 near the Alboinstrasse exit. Photo: DPA

The man appears to have had an “Islamist motivation according to our current knowledge”, prosecutors told AFP.

Local media reported that the man was a 30-year-old Iraqi who had shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) when getting out of his car Tuesday night.

Berlin's State Security is investigating a man who caused the city highway to be closed for hours.. Photo: DPA

Three accidents occurred on the A100 city motorway at about 6.30pm in the Berlin neighbourhoods of Wilmersdorf, Schöneberg and Tempelhof, reported the Berliner Morgenpost.

A motorist rammed several vehicles, including three motorcycles, with his Opel Astra, coming to a halt at the Alboinstraße exit in Tempelhof.

He threatened the policemen with a supposedly “dangerous object” he was carrying in a box, and was arrested.

“Nobody come any closer or you will all die,” the Bild daily quoted the suspect as saying after he stopped his car and placed the metal box on the roof of his vehicle.

A spokesperson for Berlin's fire department said that three people were seriously injured, and three others lightly injured, including a motorcyclist.

The man is being investigated by Berlin's State Security. The Autobahn A100 was closed for several hours on Tuesday due to the accidents.

Because of the ongoing investigations, parts of the Autobahn were still closed on Wednesday morning, leading to rush hour traffic jams.

According to the Berliner Zeitung, police used a drone for filming from the air.

Forensic technicians x-rayed the metal box the man was carrying, and said it was suitable for storing ammunition.

However, when police opened the box using high-pressure water jets it was found to contain nothing but tools. They also did not find any explosives in the man's car.

“The possibility of an Islamist attack cannot be ruled out in view of the events of yesterday evening,” prosecutors said in a statement the day after the incidents.

“Statements by the accused suggest a religious Islamist motivation” for his
actions, they said, adding: “There are also indications of psychological instability”.

The suspect was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder in at least three cases and later today was to face a judge who will decide whether he should be placed in a psychiatric facility.

One of the injured was a firefighter, said Berlin interior minister Andreas
Geisel, adding that he was “dismayed that innocent people have fallen victim to a crime out of nowhere”.

“We must be aware that Berlin remains a focus of Islamist terrorism,” he added.

The suspect had published clues on social media that he was planning an attack, according to the DPA news agency.

He had posted photos of the car used for the attack on Facebook, along with religious slogans, the report said, citing a spokesman for the prosecution.

Previous incidents

People with ties to Islamic extremism have committed violent attacks in Germany in recent years.

The worst was a ramming attack at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12. The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

More recently, an Islamist and his wife were convicted of planning a biological bomb attack in Germany in 2018 with the deadly poison ricin.

The pair had ordered castor seeds, explosives and metal ball bearings on
the internet to build the toxic bomb.

READ ALSO: Man handed 10 year jail term for biological bomb plot in Germany

The man was in March sentenced to 10 years in prison while his wife received an eight-year sentence in June.

Since 2013, the number of Islamists considered dangerous in Germany has
increased fivefold to 680, according to security services.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has often been accused, particularly by the
far right, of having contributed to the Islamist threat by opening the country's borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants in 2015.

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