Cairo ready to share results of Sinai plane crash probe: Russia's top prosecutor

Ahram Online , Thursday 28 Jul 2016

The Russian airliner was downed in an apparent terrorist attack, killing all 224 on board

Russian airliner
Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail looks at what is left of a Russian airliner after it crashed in Egypt's central Sinai in October 2015. (Photo: Reuters)

Egyptian authorities are ready to provide Moscow with the latest information on the progress of Cairo's probe into the crash of a Russian passenger jet in Sinai last October that killed all 224 people on board, a Russian government spokesman said Wednesday

Egypt's prosecutor-general, Nabil Sadek, along with other top government officials, held talks on Wednesday with Russian prosecutor-general Yuri Chaika in Moscow where both sides signed a memorandum of cooperation between the two countries’ prosecution authorities.

"The prosecutor-general of the Arab Republic of Egypt expressed readiness in case of need to provide to the Russian prosecutor-general's office and other concerned departments information about the status of the investigation into the A321 plane crash in October 2015," spokesman of the Russian prosecutor-general’s office Alexander Kurennoi told Russia's TASS news agency.

"The two sides also discussed various issues related to cooperation in the legal sphere and in the fight against international crime," Kurennoi added.

An Egyptian delegation consisting of the minister of civil aviation, the prosecutor-general, and the head of the committee investigating the crash flew to Moscow earlier this week to provide Russian officials with the latest findings in Cairo's investigation.

Moscow suspended all civil flights to Egypt over security concerns in the wake of the crash. The plane was en route from the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh to St Petersburg in Russia.

Egypt has said that it fulfilled 85 percent of Russia’s demands regarding aviation safety and is now expecting steps to be taken by the Russian side towards resuming flights.

Russia said a bomb destroyed the airliner, and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi suggested in February that the plane was downed due to "terrorism." 

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