Police raid Cyprus crash airline

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 From the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4154748.stm


Cypriot police have raided the offices of Helios Airways, a day after one 
of the airline's planes crashed in Greece, killing all 121 people on board.

Officials said the police were looking for documents that could be useful 
in a possible future criminal investigation.

Aviation experts and investigators are struggling to unravel the sequence 
of events which led to the crash.

All but 11 of the victims were Cypriot and some 17 children are believed to 
have been among those who died.

Security alert

Officials said that all but six of the 121 victims of the crash may have 
been dead before the plane smashed into a mountainside in Greece. Helios 
said the company was co-operating fully with the police.

"There has been no question of our failing to co-operate with the 
authorities at any time," it said in a statement.

In Greece, three days of mourning have been declared for the island's worst 
accident in decades.

Relatives of victims, who included 10 Greeks, have been arriving in Athens 
to identify the dead.

Flight 522 had been heading for Athens en-route to Prague when it lost 
contact with air traffic controllers, sparking a security alert before it 
crashed on Sunday afternoon.

Click here for a graphic showing what happened

The pilot of the Boeing 737, 50-year-old German Marten Hans Jurgen, was 
among the dead.

Experts looking into the cause of the crash believe a technical failure led 
either to a loss of cabin pressure or oxygen supply.

Greek Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos said: "It seems the deceased, 
in most cases, although not all, expired before the crash."

Coroner Philippos Koutsaftis told AFP news agency that the main hypothesis 
for cause of death was asphyxiation.

However, a defence ministry source quoted by Reuters said it appeared that 
the bodies had been frozen solid.
Greek police have arrested a man who claimed his cousin sent him a text 
message from the aircraft minutes before it crashed saying that everyone 
was frozen.

Relatives have vented fury on Helios Airways, accusing the company of 
allowing an unsafe aircraft to take to the skies - a charge the Cypriot 
carrier denies.

It has also denied a number of reports that it has grounded its entire 
fleet following the incident.

Company chairman Andreas Drakou said the crash was a terrible tragedy and 
apologised for the delay in announcing the names on the passenger list.

Both flight recorders have been recovered from the crash site but one of 
them is in a "very bad state", chief investigator Akrivos Tsolakis said.

'Out of control'

Crews of Greek F-16 fighter jets which were scrambled after contact with 
the airliner was lost, reported seeing the co-pilot slumped in the cabin. 
They later saw two unidentified people trying to take control of the plane 
and could see oxygen masks hanging down in the cabin.

"There had to have been a fast and brutal problem to cause the death of the 
pilots in the cockpit."

Helios insists its plane was airworthy but Greek television has reported 
that the airline's fleet has had a history of technical faults.

On one recent flight from Warsaw to Larnaca, it said, passengers were taken 
off the plane suffering from respiratory problems. 

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