Egypt plays defense as investigations into Sinai plane crash continue

Five days after a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai desert, killing all 224 people aboard, the Egyptian government has focused on defending its security standards and discrediting theories suggesting a terrorist attack was behind the tragedy.

Given a pervasive lack of transparency, other countries have taken the safety of their nationals into their own hands, gathering their own intelligence and making unilateral decisions vis-à-vis travel to the popular Red Sea resort town Sharm el-Sheikh.

On Sunday, the day after the incident, Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry asked other states “not to take any measures that give impressions that don’t reflect the reality of the situation.” He urged all parties to wait until investigations revealed the actual circumstances of the crash.

But other countries couldn’t wait. Authorities representing several nations have begun suggesting alternative narratives of what really happened based on the intelligence their own forces gathered. In response, Egyptian officials have decried any parties that chose not to act in concert with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government.

While Sisi was mid-air Wednesday night on his way to London for three days of meetings with the British prime minister, the UK took measures that some commentators said were unprecedented in their explicit lack of trust in another government’s ability to handle such a tragedy.

That evening, the UK suspended its flights leaving from Sharm el-Sheikh and sent its own security personnel to the touristic city to aid British citizens there. Later that night, British officials released a statement declaring there was a significant possibility that a bomb planted aboard the plane triggered the crash. The government advised British citizens to avoid all but essential air travel to Sharm el-Sheikh.

On Thursday, Cameron asserted that his priority was to provide a safe flight back to the UK for British citizens. He promised that heightened security would be enforced at the airport. Several British airlines announced later Thursday they would fly the stranded British tourists back home on Friday.

Noting that the cause for the Russian jet’s demise remains unclear, on Thursday Germany also urged travelers to avoid Sinai as Lufthansa airlines suspended flights to the peninsula. In addition, Italy's civil aviation authority said it asked representatives of its national airlines to conduct extra security checks at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport.

Although the US government has not taken an official stance on the matter, anonymous officials told several media outlets that satellite images showed a heat flash over Sinai at the time the plane crashed. The sources said this could be proof of an explosion on the aircraft that could have been triggered by a bomb or a faulty fuel tank. This theory eliminated earlier suspicions that Islamic State forces took the plane down with missiles fired from the ground.

Stalling flights and issuing travel advisories could indicate a lack of confidence in Egypt’s ability to handle the situation, particularly given a general state of confusion in Egyptian media and the state’s failure to release updates on the investigation.

Hours after the deadly crash, Egyptian prosecutors declared that no foreign authorities would be involved in the investigations. But officials later announced the formation of a joint committee including Russian, Egyptian, French, German and Irish experts to examine the plane’s black boxes.

Aside from unconfirmed leaks to the media, the Egyptian government has yet to make public the committee's findings.

But the government did give voice to its dissatisfaction with other countries’ responses to the incident. Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry described actions like halting air travel “surprising,” while Tourism Minister Hesham Zaazou called them “unjustified.” Shoukry complained that the UK moved to halt its flights in and out of Sharm without any discussion with Egyptian forces, despite their ongoing collaboration in investigating the tragedy.