Air France crash killed two prominent illegal arms foes
Published: June 9, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
The puzzling crash of Air France’s Flight 447 killed two of the world’s “most prominent” illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking foes, according to a little-noticed report.
In a revelation sure to fuel conspiracy theories over the plane’s demise, the report reveals that two key figures in the neverending internecine battle against global arms and drug trafficking perished when the plane abruptly fell out of the sky. Both were particularly active in efforts to stem illegal arms trading in Latin America.
A 39-year Argentinian man, Pablo Dreyfus, was said to be a major player in an effort by Brazilian authorities to stop flow of arms to drug gangs in Rio. He was a consultant for Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based thinktank.
Another consultant for Small Arms Survey also died in the crash, “Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola,” according to Scotland’s Sunday Herald.
“Both men were consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International Studies,” the Herald reported. “The Survey said on its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100 countries to the cause of disarmament and development.”
Dreyfus and Dreyer were reportedly traveling to Switzerland to “present the latest edition of the Small Arms Survey handbook, of which Dreyfus was a joint editor.”
Dreyfus advocated for “stringent labeling” of ammunition produced by weapons companies, the paper said. He averred that such labeling would greatly aid the tracking of arms acquired by criminals.
Dreyfus focused in particular on Brazilian arms firm Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos which bought Germany’s Metallwerk Elisenhutte Nassau in 2007 and another company in the Czech Republic. He said CBC should “consider the risk that some of these exports end up, via diversions, feeding violence in Brazil.”
“When Rio agents smashed a cell of drug traffickers who had sourced their weapons from the tri-border area, Dreyfus noted its leaders were prominent businessmen living in apartments in the plush Rio suburbs of Ipanema and São Corrado,” the Herald noted.
Though the cause of the crash has not been conclusively determined, most experts have focused on speed sensors that may have affected the plane’s course when it was caught in severe thunderstorms.
“A spokesman for a pilots’ union says all Air France jets taking off now have been equipped with two new-generation speed sensors,” AP reported Tuesday. “The so-called Pitot tubes on the outside of an aircraft are under suspicion in the crash of Air France Flight 447 into the Atlantic Ocean.”
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I always thought when we found out who has been killed, the results would be telling. Its very sad when we suspect CIA and others to be complicit in a lot of these airplane crashes, including the one recently that killed the 911 family activist and the peace activist last month or so. Its very sad but that is what comes to mind.
or the small plane crash that killed the right-wing computer expert who was about to testify in front of Congress about email spying and what happened to the email archival system under the Shrub.
I’ve never heard of them myself, I think organization such as F.A.S. are far more ‘prominent’, furthermore, in Brazil, I think it’d be easier to just hire some street kids to murder the guy than to go through the trouble of by-passing security and whatever to plant a bomb on a plane and murder hundreds.
Sound pretty fucking far fetched to me, anything for a buck though, eh?
“Dreyfus advocated for “stringent labeling” of ammunition produced by weapons companies, the paper said. He averred that such labeling would greatly aid the tracking of arms acquired by criminals.” - Criminals can buy their own bullet manufacturing equipment, it’s not a big deal and that doesn’t sound like ‘most prominent’ to me.
“When Rio agents smashed a cell of drug traffickers who had sourced their weapons from the tri-border area, Dreyfus noted its leaders were prominent businessmen living in apartments in the plush Rio suburbs of Ipanema and São Corrado,” - Wow, a ‘drug cell’. Americans are estimated to consume around 400 tons of coke a year, some think quite a bit more.
Sounds like Alex Jons b.s.
gangs can’t make thousands of bullets and still be out killing people. And anyone that buys “that much equipment” would end up under surveillance as well.
And you’re missing the point of if they are stepping on the wrong drug toes, they would have to go away.
Just because you don’t know about a group (given the dismal state of American news and journalism) doesn’t mean they aren’t actually disrupting the “powers that be”. In fact, the more problems they cause early on, the less I’d suspect we’d hear about them in America… can’t have potential targets become well known, that means they would be missed.
I’ve made thousands of bullets, so can you, no big deal. It’s trivial. You can buy ‘that much equipment’ locally, anywhere in the U.S. and probably Brazil too. No big deal, no surveilance. Take a look on ebay, go buy one of the thousands and thousands of books on reloading if you’d like.
Everything is pointing to the pitot sensors as the cause of the crash and the fact is, the flight sent 24 messages to air france about pitot sensor failures shortly before the crash. French pilots unions are recomending that pilots refuse to fly until the sensors are swapped out. They’ve known there’s been a problem with them for a year.
The idea that these guys were so ultra-important in the ‘fight’ against illegal arms and drugs is way out there. This is even more silly than the Litvinenko story or some James Bond movie plot.
The whole premise of this article is silly like some Alex Jones lie.
As for the idea that this group might be more prominent in the fight against illegal arms than FAS, I don’t see any indication of that, from their website or elsewhere.
drug lords that engage in killing lots and lots of people need lots and lots of bullets. Getting them from factories is much cheaper and faster than making them by hand; why do you think we made factories?
i can’t attest to their efficacy, nor any other groups.. I don’t know any of them (that you mention), I was just pointing out that they apparently got in someone’s craw.. and now they are dead.
and in the day and age of the government being able to track virtually every transaction completed, if you buy enough materials to make “thousands of bullets”, I’d suspect the FBI or ATF would be checking you out, quietly. Your not seeing them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
I agree. Street kids in Rio would be better assassins than bombing a plane. What I am absolutely certain about is we are not being told the truth.
Street kids in Rio would be better assassins than bombing a plane? Um, these dudes are dead, seems to me if the plane was bombed it was pretty effective.
And, any prominent figures that work for the government and/or fight cartels etc would have a security apparatus at all times. I’m pretty sure that is standard protocol in Brazil.
What do you have against street kids from São Paulo? They’re not good enough to be assassins too?
yes sao paulo that’s what i meant. That’s the giant open slum right?
Good point about the security detail but, why kill hundreds of non related innocent people? That would bring too much scrutiny. But…a grenade in a fuselage would be darn effective. Again, don’t hold your breath for the truth. It died along time ago.
if there isn’t much to investigate (like here), scrutiny is moot.
If there are tools and witnesses, that can get messy.
Why would drug lords (including the CIA) give a rat’s ass about collateral damage? The key is a lack of evidence, not caring about innocents.
Actually, the giant open slum is in Rio. We drove past it (and smelt it) when I was down there 3 years ago. It was formerly the largest slum in the world, now second to a slum in Indonesia (I think).
The poverty in Brazil isn’t isolated to one slum however. Sao Paulo has a very big poverty problem despite the city being one of the richest in the country.
I went down the week after Carnivale. Some of the people I met went to Sao Paulo and particpated in the street parades where they have a rope around an entire moving body of people. You drink and eat while on the go. Some of the people I talked to from the States said that poor people were lining the streets trying to rip cameras and anything else they could get their hands on off of the people inside. One guy got mugged and a policeman was shot in the melee.
I can’t believe the air speed sensors in the wing malfunctioning being why it went down. In the news they are saying now that it could be that the air sensors in the wings was malfunctioning and telling the pilots that they where going to fast or to slow (most likely to fast). lets go with the too slow scenario, if the dials where saying you’re at a certain speed and are in danger of crashing unless you speed up you accelerate. Eventually the pilot will figure out that he hasn’t fallen out of the sky or into a dive when the speed dial says “60 miles an hour) and he’s still flying. The pilot will figure out that the sensor is out and will radio back and turn his plane around back torward brazil. Same scenario with a air speed sensor saying your going to fast, when the pilots start to ease up on the speed and find out they are slower than what can keep them in the air and start to stall they will increase fuel to the system and keep the speed on. And then go back to brazil to get it fixed. And another thing to consider, there are other sensors on this plane that would contradict and actually alert the pilots. Like when your not going fast enough to stay in the air you’ll find out through other sensors and from the yolk that you don’t have enough lift so you pile on the gas so to speak to keep in the air.
No, something else happened to this flight and I won’t be surprised this may have been a planted bomb or something.
When I heard of the crash I checked the weather in the central Atlantic. Their were no thunderstorms in the area later identified as the crash site. No school of sharks either in those waters; they tend to cruise the coast lines. If this is all our wimpy press can come up with. We’ll never know.
That’s as good a reason as any to have a crash.
Illegal arms mongers must be cheering, and the CIA whose
ex-members also deal illegal arms around the world.
Among other things.
It’s a business.
I was Hoping we’d get a good conspiracy out of this soon!
“The pitot tube was invented by the French engineer Henri Pitot in the early 1700s and was modified to its modern form in the mid 1800s by French scientist Henry Darcy. ”
Is this REALLY still the primary instrument used for airspeed and other essential instruments with no backup?
The pitot tube still is the standard for air velocity measurement, all other instrumentation gets calibrated to match. I knew planes used pitot tubes for that purpose and always wondered about them getting clogged w/material, including water in a very heavy rain, snow/slush/ice buildup. Clogging would cause them to under-read or read ~zero if completely plugged. The only way to make it over-read is to throw an unusually dense gas at the tube, instrumentation assumes atmospheric density and must compensate from there for altitude on an airplane. Not sure why the article would say “so-called” pitot tubes. They mention backup instrumentation now in place; don’t know if that’s a simple vane-style anemometer or maybe they have ‘timed’ gps that calculates speed according to position changes with time. But such a gps-based device would calculate speed relative to the planet- and it is speed relative to moving air- air speed- that counts here, that keeps the craft aloft.
I think this may be a bogus report.
Their names don’t appear on the passenger list.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/flight-447-passengers-lis_n_211435.html
Herb,
I suggest you recheck your sources.
http://www.iansa.org/