Black Boxes Suggests Pilots Tried to Save Russian Plane

New Daily News | August 31 2004

Comment: I thought the black boxes couldn't be recovered? Interesting that they are suddenly fixed after the blame is rested on the Chechens.

MOSCOW - Records from one of the Russian passenger jets blown out of the sky last week indicate that the crew tried to manage the wounded jet before it broke apart and crashed.

Russia's transport minister, citing a black box recording from one of the two planes that crashed minutes apart, said conversation inside the cockpit of the Tu-154 plane indicated the crew was unable to contact traffic controllers and tried to manage the jet for some time after the blast.

"The words spoken by the crew members among themselves are [about] work by the crew to save the plane," the minister, Igor Levitin, said.

Also, new details emerged about two Chechen women who are the focus of suspicions that the planes were blown up by terrorists. All 90 people aboard the two aircraft were killed.

Investigators were scraping for clues about Amanta Nagayeva, 30, and S. Dzhebirkhanova, 37, two Chechen women whose names were listed on tickets for the flights.

The two aroused accident investigators' suspicions because they bought tickets at the last minute and because they were the only victims about whom no relatives inquired after news of the crashes.

There was information bolstering the theory that Nagayeva and Dzhebirkhanova were indeed so-called Black Widow suicide bombers, Chechen women who had lost sons or husbands and were getting revenge.

Nagayeva was single, and Dzhebirkhanova had been divorced. Nagayeva's brother disappeared three years ago in Chechnya; the family believes he was abducted by Russian forces.

A brother of Dzhebirkhanova, who had been an Islamic court judge under Chechen separatist president Aslan Maskhadov, was killed in 1998.

Nagayeva and Dzhebirkhanova, who lived in an apartment in Grozny, Chechnya's war-shattered capital, were seen on Aug. 22 leaving by bus from the town of Khasavyurt in the neighboring province of Dagestan, the newspaper said. They were believed to be en route to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, where they often bought clothes and other commodities to sell at the Grozny market.

Relatives of both said they were unaware the women were engaged in any activity connected to rebels or terrorists, Izvestia reported.

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