P2JW306000-0-A00800-1--------XA
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
A8 | Monday, November 2, 2015
WORLD NEWS
Russian Plane Broke Up During Flight
Mechanical problems
seen as likely cause of
weekend crash in
Egypt’s Sinai desert
Sharm El Sheikh,
departure location
Red Sea
Source: FlightRadar24
dropped some 6,000 feet in
about 22 seconds, according to
preliminary radar data posted
Saturday by a commercial
website. In roughly 60 seconds, the data show the
plane’s speed dropping to
about 100 miles per hour,
slower than the forward speed
needed to continue safe flight.
According to the data, which
hasn’t been confirmed by investigators, the plane had
been cruising at roughly 460
miles per hour.
Both of the plane’s black
boxes, which record flight
data, were recovered on Saturday, said Mohamed Rahma, a
spokesman for Egypt’s civil
aviation ministry.
“It’s too early to speak of
conclusions,” Mr. Sorochenko
told journalists in Cairo after
covered as of Sunday.
At St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo
airport, where the plane had
been scheduled to land Saturday, mourners laid bouquets of
carnations and lit candles outside the arrivals hall.
Pavel Bylinin, a resident of
the St. Petersburg municipality of Sestroretsk, said he
knew two of the crash victims.
“You don’t know what to
feel in this kind of situation,”
he said. “Such mixed feelings.
You want to understand why
this all happened.”
The aircraft had undergone
all the required maintenance
checks, Kogalymavia has said.
When an accident or incident prompts significant
structural or bulkhead repairs
to a jetliner, the carrier typically consults the manufac-
inspecting the crash site, according to Russian state news
agencies. “The breakup happened in the air.”
The Airbus A321, operated
by Russian carrier Kogalymavia, was flying to St. Petersburg, Russia, from the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh
in Sinai, a popular destination
for Russian tourists. Several
airlines suspended flights over
Sinai until more is known
about the cause of the crash.
The Egyptian affiliate of Islamic State, which is known as
Sinai Province and is active in
the restive peninsula, claimed
responsibility for downing the
plane and said it was in response to Russia’s intervention in the Syrian war on the
side of the regime. Syria’s Shiite-linked regime, which is
backed by Iran, is fighting the
Sunni extremists of Islamic
State among other foes.
Islamic State and its affiliates have frequently made exaggerated claims, and Russian
officials said they doubted
whether the group has the capabilities to carry out such an
attack.
U.S. and European air
safety officials, who had previously warned airliners about
the threat of antiaircraft
weapons in the region, believe
flying above 26,000 feet is
safe. The Russian plane was
above 30,000 feet when it appears to have broken up.
An Egyptian team was
searching for evidence and
victims. Of the 224 people believed to have died in the
crash, 163 bodies had been re-
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
turer and often wants it to
sign off on how the work is
slated to be done.
It isn’t clear what occurred
when the A321 was repaired
years ago after the 2001 tail
strike, or whether the work involved bulkhead repairs.
But safety experts have
been aware of the hazards of
incorrectly repaired bulkheads
for more than a decade. In
2002, a China Airlines jumbo
jet en route to Hong Kong
from Taiwan broke apart
shortly after takeoff, killing all
225 people aboard. Investigators determined the in-flight
rupture was caused by improper bulkhead repairs many
years earlier.
—Nathan Hodge
and James Marson
contributed to this article.
Resignation Boosts
Israel Gas Projects
BY RORY JONES
HAZEM BADER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
talks were bogged down by
disagreement on the best way
forward.
Renewed violence has created a new impetus to revive
diplomatic negotiations between the two sides for the
first time since Washingtonled peace talks collapsed early
last year.
But there is no international agreement on what approach to adopt. European
Union diplomats in Brussels
support a confidence-building
exercise that recognizes political constraints facing Israeli
and Palestinian leaders and
seeks to create conditions for
a full peace push.
Others, such as the French
government, believe only concerted international pressure,
possibly including a deadline
Aq a b a
z
By Rory Jones in Tel
Aviv and Laurence
Norman in Brussels
ue
Sharm El Sheikh
Mourners lay flowers Sunday at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport, where the plane was to land.
for talks and laying down the
outlines of a deal, can work.
Seeking to balance the approaches, current United Nations Security Council member
New Zealand is circulating a
draft resolution that backs a
period of confidence-building
efforts to improve the situation but also seeks more politically challenging moves such
as an Israeli freeze on Jewish
settlement in the West Bank
and a Palestinian commitment
to steer clear of new cases at
the International Criminal
Court.
Yet it isn’t clear how much
support the compromise can
win on the ground.
“We have been taking baby
steps for 20 years,” said
Husam Zomlot, a senior aide
to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “We
need a whole new approach to
this conflict.”
On Sunday morning, a Palestinian attempted to stab a
soldier in the southern West
Bank village of Beit Einun, the
Israeli military said. Security
forces shot dead the assailant.
Israeli police said another at-
SAUDI
ARABIA
St. Petersburg
WorldPowers
DisagreeonPath
ToMideastTalks
Two Palestinian assailants
launched separate attacks on
Israelis Sunday, according to
Israeli authorities, as international efforts to revive peace
Gulf of
OLGA MALTSEVA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
50 km
fS
Russian authorities suggested the cause of Saturday’s
crash was likely mechanical
failure, though it was too early
to draw a firm conclusion.
The midair breakup left debris scattered over approximately eight square miles, the
head of the Russian-led Interstate Aviation Committee, Viktor Sorochenko, said Sunday.
The plane had suffered substantial damage in 2001 when
the tail struck the runway on
landing in Cairo, according to
the Flight Safety Foundation’s
Aviation Safety Network. That
event has captured the attention of safety experts and investigators given that the tailsection debris was located
apart from the rest of the
plane, according to two people
knowledgeable about the investigation.
After climbing gradually to
more than 33,000 feet, the jet
Cairo
50 miles
J O R DA N
Last flight data
captured
lf o
By Andy Pasztor
in Los Angeles, Dahlia
Kholaif in Cairo and
Robert Wall in London
ISRAEL
EGYPT
Gu
The Russian passenger jet
that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai
Peninsula with 224 people on
board broke apart in flight and
debris from the tail section was
found separate from the rest of
the fuselage, suggesting that
section may have split off in
the air, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Mediterranean Sea
Security forces check the body of a Palestinian shot dead after he
allegedly tried to stab an Israeli soldier in the West Bank Sunday.
tacker, also Palestinian, ran
over border police at a junction near the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, injuring
three before driving away. He
later turned himself into authorities, they said.
According to the Israeli police and the Palestinian authorities, 11 Israelis and more
than 60 Palestinians have been
killed in the wave of violence
over the past month.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet in
Washington with President Barack Obama on Nov. 9.
Obama administration officials have said they are reassessing prospects for a peace
process after some of Mr. Netanyahu’s statements in recent
months.
Those included him backtracking on endorsement of a
two-state solution.
TEL AVIV—Israel’s economy
minister resigned on Sunday,
allowing the government to
move ahead with stalled plans
to develop two offshore gas
fields after nearly a year of
political wrangling.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said he would take
over Aryeh Deri’s post to push
through a framework to develop the gas fields after the
plan was ruled anticompetitive
by the country’s regulator last
year.
“Today we are taking a major step toward advancing the
supply of gas in the state of
Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
“Natural gas will be the No. 1
growth engine in Israel in the
coming years.”
Mr. Deri had refused to exercise his power to waive last
December’s antitrust decision,
which ruled the plans for the
two gas fields would lead to
an effective monopoly for the
two main stakeholders, U.S.based Noble Energy Inc. and
its Israeli partner, Delek
Group Ltd.
The Tamar and Leviathan
fields were discovered in 2009
and 2010, respectively, and are
worth an estimated $25 billion
in potential gas sales, Barclays
Bank analysts said.
Mr. Netanyahu said the gas
from the two fields would
lower energy costs for Israelis.
Their development would inject billions of dollars into the
economy by creating new industries that support the energy sector, he said.
“It also gives energy independence to Israel,” said Mr.
Netanyahu. “We will not be
dependent on foreign energy
sources—this is very important for the state of Israel.”
Mr. Deri, who is the leader
of the right-leaning, religious
Shas party, had decided
against waiving the antitrust
ruling unless the Israeli parliament voted on the framework
for development of the two
fields. The parliament, known
as the Knesset, approved the
plans in September.
The prime minister heads a
coalition government with a
one-seat majority of 61 out of
120 lawmakers in the Israeli
parliament. His Likud Party
holds 30 seats and is a minority in its own coalition.
In addition to his role as
prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu
now holds the positions of foreign minister and economy
minister in his government.
Syrians Seeking Asylum in West Use Fake Passports on the Way
ISTANBUL—Somewhere
over Europe, Kassem went to
the airplane’s bathroom and
flushed his fake Italian passport down the toilet.
When he landed in London’s
Heathrow Airport a few hours
later, Kassem presented his
Syrian ID to U.K. immigration
officials and requested asylum.
The trip wouldn’t have been
possible using his actual Syrian passport—the country’s
war has turned it into a burden for anyone fleeing the
conflict.
When asked where his passport was, Kassem told the officials: “It’s in the toilet.”
While hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees make
the dangerous sea voyage to
Europe followed by arduous
treks across the continent,
some of their countrymen
have used fraudulent Western
passports to board planes to
countries where they can request asylum. Winter’s approach, turning seas colder,
HAZEM DAKEL
BY RAJA ABDULRAHIM
Rama Khouly, left, used a fake
passport to reach Sweden.
stormier and more dangerous,
is expected to increase the
practice.
There are no reliable figures on how many Syrians use
counterfeit passports to board
international flights. But
smugglers estimate it is 1%-5%
of those heading to Europe.
With thousands of Syrians
making the journey, the underground market in fake travel
documents is thriving, traffickers say.
In the first half of this year,
Syrians also topped the list of
those caught using forged documents to travel into the European Union’s Schengen zone,
according to Frontex, which
oversees the EU’s borders in
cooperation with member
states. With 258 Syrians
caught, Syrians accounted for
more than 10% of those discovered using false papers.
For any foreign travel, a
Syrian passport is only slightly
more useful than a North Korean one, according to a ranking by the Passport Index.
While Syrian passport holders
easily obtained travel visas
from most countries before
the war erupted, immigration
officials now fear they will
claim asylum. Even neighboring Arab countries have imposed tight restrictions on
which Syrians can enter. For
most Syrians, only illicit options remain.
“The smuggler can get you
in a variety of ways, starting
from the cheapest and the
most dangerous to sort of the
highest class and the safest,”
said Frontex spokeswoman Izabella Cooper.
Besides Western passports
and IDs, Syrian refugees rely
on a wide range of fake documents to function in exile.
Many host countries bar them
from officially registering
births or marriages. Those
wanted by the regime for suspected opposition ties fear
visiting a Syrian consulate for
any business.
To meet growing demand,
skilled document forgers have
expanded their product line.
Abu Qasim, like most of the
traffickers operating in Istanbul, posts ads on Facebook
groups for Syrian refugees, offering to arrange everything
from Syrian and European
passports to high school and
college diplomas and marriage
certificates.
Fake passports range in
price from the easiest to forge
to the hardest. The Spanish
passport, at a cost of $1,450, is
the cheapest, said Mr. Qasim,
who works with a number of
forgers. A French or U.S. passport is about $3,000.
Counterfeit passports often
include pages filled with fake
visa stamps to add an air of
authenticity. Some forgers
have even mastered the ability
to re-create holograms, a security feature of many passports.
Of the 40 people to whom
Mr. Qasim has sold fake passports, 15 have been caught by
immigration officials, he said.
Overall, only about half of
those migrants with counterfeit passports reach their destinations, he estimated.
Before he resorted to a
passport forger, Kassem, who
owns a concrete factory and
car business in Syria, tried for
months to enter Europe legally. He applied for a Greek
visa last year and then for a
Schengen visa, showing he had
more than $300,000 in his
bank account. But both applications were rejected.
Friends put him in touch
with a trafficker in Istanbul
earlier this year. His photo
was taken and within a week,
the father of eight was handed
a fake Italian passport bearing
his name and date of birth.
Like Kassem, Rama Khouly
was persistent. Seven months
pregnant and reckoning her
unborn son had no future in
Turkey, Khouly, 24, first attempted to board a Europebound plane at Istanbul’s
Atatürk Airport in early 2014,
using her 35-year-old Greek
friend’s passport.
She was caught. Two days
later, Mr. Khouly strode into
Istanbul’s Sobiha Goksen International Airport, wearing a
large poncho to hide her stomach. She had also darkened
her hair and donned dark
brown contact lenses to better
match the photo on the passport. Despite the disguise, she
knew she looked nothing like
the woman in the photo of her
Greek passport.
Nine hours later, however,
she set foot in Sweden. Ten
months later, she was issued a
Swedish residency card.