Despite their insistence that terrorism did not cause the crash of Metrojet 9268 last October, an insistence with which pretty much nobody else agrees, it appears that Egypt may now have a suspect in the, um, terrorist bombing of Metrojet 9268:
An EgyptAir mechanic whose cousin joined Islamic State in Syria is suspected of planting a bomb on a Russian passenger plane that was blown out of Egypt’s skies in late October, according to sources familiar with the matter.
So far Egypt has publicly said it has found no evidence that the MetroJet flight, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, killing all 224 people on board, was brought down by terrorism.
A senior security official at the airline denied that any of its employees had been arrested or were under suspicion, and an Interior Ministry official also said there had been no arrests.
But the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, said the mechanic had been detained, along with two airport policemen and a baggage handler suspected of helping him put the bomb on board.
This raises a couple of questions, assuming the story checks out, particularly about what Egyptian authorities were doing when they said that they’d checked the family connections of everyone working at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport for terrorist links and found none. At least they nabbed the guys (again, assuming they really did it) before they were able to bring down another plane.
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