The Paris Public Prosecutor's Office requested that the former head of the Egyptian “Flash Airlines” company be brought to justice, 20 years after the killing of 148 people, including 135 Frenchmen, in a Boeing 737 plane crash off the coast of the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh.
A plane crashed in the Red Sea 3 minutes after take-off on January 3, 2004, killing its 135 French passengers and 13 crew members.
Agence France-Presse, quoting an informed source, said that the Public Prosecutor requested last month that Mohamed Nour (70 years old) be tried on charges of manslaughter.
Nour had been chairing the board of directors of the low-cost airline, which has been liquidated since the accident. The French judiciary summoned Nour as a witness in September 2021. He did not respond to subpoena requests, and he was charged with manslaughter 3 months later.
Many failures
The prosecution indicated that the “numerous failures, approximate calculations and summary analyses” of the two pilots who died in the accident constitute the “proximate cause” of the plane crash.
The Public Prosecutor considered that the main criminal crimes were clearly and primarily attributable to Flash Airlines, which was accused of not training its pilots and the poor working conditions that led to them not performing their work properly on the day of the accident.
However, neither Flash Airlines, which was liquidated, nor the two pilots who died in the accident, can be held criminally liable.
The French Public Prosecutor believed that Nour, who is considered the legal representative of the company, could be tried for manslaughter for his contribution to the tragedy, by not ensuring the status of the crew and their proper training.