NELSPRUIT – Two years after the Hawks started an investigation into the aircraft crash that killed Mozambique’s first president, Samora Machel, there have still been no arrests.This was according to Hawks spokesman Capt Paul Ramoloko, who also confirmed that the investigation was still underway.
In January 2012, an investigation by the Hawks began in earnest when they received a tip-off that implicated the apartheid-era government officials and security agencies, including the SA Defence Force, in engineering the crash.
The Times revealed that an inquiry involving South African and Mozambican police, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Civil Aviation Authority, had started.
President Jacob Zuma was said to have sanctioned the inquiry, which was separate from the one launched by the justice department.
Earlier this month AIM reported that an air safety investigator, sent by the US State Department to report on the crash in 1986, had confirmed that the apartheid regime had possessed a mobile navigational beacon, which could have been used to lure the plane away from its correct flight path.
He told media that he wanted an independent body such as the United Nations to investigate whether the crash of Machel’s aircraft, a Soviet manufactured Tupolev 134 incident, was “a crime against humanity”.
Samora Machel was killed when the Tupolev crashed into a hillside at Mbuzini just inside South Africa, on October 19, 1986. He was returning to Maputo after attending a summit in the Zambian town of Mbala, when his aircraft took an unexpected turn away from Maputo and into the Lebombo mountains.
It is widely believed that Machel’s plane was lured off course by a pirate navigational beacon (VOR – Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range) operated by apartheid military.
The US expert, Dr Alan Diehl, was sent to South Africa in January 1987 to find out what had caused the death of Machel and 34 others. Working under cover, his mission was to assist air safety investigators and to report back to his government if there was any truth to allegations that Machel had been murdered.
Diehl stated that the US State Department was particularly keen to know whether there was any heightened threat to the life of US President Ronald Reagan should it be true that Machel had been assassinated. Apparently, there was a concern that there might be an attempt on Reagan’s life in revenge.
Diehl was an award winning aviation safety expert whose duties had included training the crew of Air Force One, the US Presidential aircraft.
During his fortnight in South Africa, Diehl was briefed by the US and South African governments, and was shown material filmed by SABC, he did not visit the crash site as it had already been cleared of evidence.
Reviewing this information, Diehl concluded that gross errors by Machel’s air crew were partly caused by poorly designed cockpit equipment in the Tupolev and mental fatigue resulting from a long wait in the tropical heat in Zambia prior to the flight.
However, his view changed towards the end of his stay, when he opened up a delicate discussion with a senior member of South Africa’s civil aviation authority. He asked directly for the location of a mobile VOR. According to Diehl, “I could tell he was extremely nervous when I asked where it was”.
In his recently published book “Air Safety Investigators: Using Science to Save Lives – One Crash at a Time1”, Diehl revealed that “I was aware, when a standard VOR needed to be repaired, a portable transmitter was temporarily placed next to the standard unit. This mobile VOR then transmitted signals on the same frequency while the standard unit was inoperative, allowing vital air navigation to continue uninterrupted”.
He added, “a powerful mobile VOR could also theoretically have been used to intentionally dupe unsuspecting pilots”.
Aware of the allegations that the plane had been drawn away from its flight path to Maputo and into the mountains by a false beacon, he directly questioned the senior official, who replied that “it had been in the hands of the police at the time”.
