Two passengers on doomed Air France jet had names linked to Islamic terror groups
By Peter Allen
10th June 2009
Daily Mail Online
Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on board the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it emerged today.
French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31.
It has also emerged that the laptop and boarding pass of British oil executive Arthur Coakley have been found in the wreckage of the jet.
Flight AF447 crashed in mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm.
While it is certain that there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out.
Soon after news of the fatal crash broke, agents working for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), the French equivalent of MI6, were dispatched to Brazil.
It was there that they established that two names on the passenger list are also on highly-classified documents listing the names of radical Muslims considered a threat to the French Republic.
A source working for the French security services told highly-repected Paris weekly L’Express that the link was ‘highly significant’.
There is a possibility that the name similarities are simply a ‘macabre coincidence’, the source added, but the revelation is still being ‘taken very seriously’.
France has received numerous threats from Islamic terrorist groups in recent months, especially since French troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan.
Security chiefs have been particularly worried about airborne suicide attacks, similarly to the ones on the U.S. on September 11th 2001.
French investigators today confirmed that that terrorism has not been ruled out, with an Air France spokesman adding that ‘all the indications’ are that the Airbus suffered some kind of catastrophic equipment failure.
A total of 41 bodies have so far been recovered from the zone 700 miles off Brazil's north-east coast where the plane came down.
Brazilian and French officials are using DNA samples from relatives and dental records to identify the remains.
On Monday, a Brazilian crew recovered the tail fin from the plane - considered significant because it could narrow the area underwater where the black boxes are.
The cause of the disaster is not known, but initial suspicions are focusing on the plane's airspeed sensors which were giving faulty readings, according to automatic data alerts sent by the plane in its final minutes in the air.
A French nuclear submarine, the Emeraude, and a naval vessel containing robot submarines should reach the crash site within the next day or so.
But a large amount of material has already been recovered, including possessions belonging to Briton Mr Coakley.
His wife Patricia said a local police liaison officer called at the family home in Sandsend, near Whitby, North Yorks, to say her husband's laptop and boarding pass had been found.
'I just want to remember him smiling and laughing. He was a wonderful man,' she said.
'We are just in limbo and still waiting for the phone call we will get from the authorities, but don't want.
'We cannot plan anything at this time until we get more news. But I don't want to fly out to Brazil.'
Mrs Coakley had spoken to her husband by phone shortly before he boarded the plane.
He had planned to take an earlier flight, but it was fully booked. He should have been in Brazil for two weeks on business and home on May 19, but was delayed.
She has been married to her husband for 34 years and the couple have three children Dominic, 31, Patrick, 29 and Mise, 25.
Mr Coakley, 61, was a structural design engineer and partner in the PD&MS firm based at Aberdeen.
He had many working contacts on Teesside and was also a director at Wilton Engineering Services based in Middlesbrough.
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