Indonesia says no evidence so far of terrorism in AirAsia crash

Indonesian investigators said on Monday in Jakarta that they had not found any evidence so far that terrorists were involved in the crash of an AirAsia passenger jet last month that killed all 162 people on board.

Chief Investigator Andreas Hananto said that his team of 10 investigators at the National Transportation Safety Committee had found no threats in the cockpit voice recordings to indicate foul play during AirAsia Flight QZ8501.

The Airbus A320-200 vanished from radar screens on December 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore, with no survivors.

Hananto said there was no evidence from the recording that terrorism was involved, because if there were terrorism, there would have been a threat of some kind.

“In that critical situation, the recording indicates that the pilot was busy with the handling of the plane,” he said.

Nurcahyo Utomo, another investigator, said they had listened to the whole of the recording but transcribed only about half, but so far we didn’t hear any voice of other persons other than the pilots.

“We didn’t hear any sounds of gunfire or explosions, for the time being, based on that, we can eliminate the possibility of terrorism,’’ he said.

(Reuters/NAN)