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CAIRO/ATHENS (Reuters) – Search teams scoured the Mediterranean Sea on Friday, hunting for wreckage of an EgyptAir jet carrying 66 people that disappeared in a crash that Egypt said may have been caused by a terrorist attack.

No group had claimed responsibility more than 24 hours after the disappearance of flight MS804, an Airbus A320 that was flying from Paris to Cairo.

Three French investigators and a technical expert from Airbus arrived in Cairo early on Friday to help investigate the fate of the missing plane, airport sources said.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said it was too early to rule out any explanation for the disaster, while the country’s aviation minister said a terrorist attack was more likely than a technical failure.

There was confusion over the discovery of possible debris, with Egyptian officials initially saying Greek authorities had found “floating material” and life jackets likely to be from the plane.

However, EgyptAir Vice President Ahmed Adel told CNN late on Thursday that the wreckage had not been found.

“We stand corrected on finding the wreckage because what we identified is not a part of our plane. So the search and rescue is still going on,” Adel said.

Greek defense sources told Reuters the material was discovered in the sea 370 km (230 miles) south of the island of Crete.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered the civil aviation ministry, the army’s search and rescue center, the navy, and the air force to take all necessary measures to locate debris from the aircraft.

In a statement issued by his office, Sisi also ordered an investigative committee formed by the civil aviation ministry to immediately start investigating the causes of the plane’s disappearance.

Officials from multiple U.S. agencies told Reuters that a U.S. review of satellite imagery so far had not produced any signs of an explosion aboard the EgyptAir flight.

The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the conclusion was the result of a preliminary examination of imagery and cautioned against media reports suggesting the United States believed a bomb was responsible for the crash.

They said the United States has not ruled out any possible causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew.

Amid uncertainty about what brought down the plane, Los Angeles International Airport became the first major U.S. air transportation hub to say it was stepping up security measures.

PLANE SWERVED RADICALLY

Greece deployed aircraft and a frigate to search for the missing plane. Egypt said it would lead the investigation and France would participate.

Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said the Airbus swerved radically and plunged from 37,000 feet to 15,000 before vanishing from Greek radar screens.

According to Greece’s civil aviation chief, calls from Greek air traffic controllers to MS804 went unanswered just before it left Greek airspace, and it disappeared from radar screens soon afterwards.

There was no official indication of a possible cause, whether technical failure, human error or sabotage.

Ultra-hardline Islamists have targeted airports, airliners and tourist sites in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries over the past few years.

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two infants, and 10 crew, EgyptAir said. They included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other countries. A320s normally seat 150 people.

At Cairo airport, a man sat on a brown leather couch crying with his hands covering his face. “How long will Egypt live if human lives are so cheap?” he said.

The mother of a flight attendant rushed out of the VIP hall where families waited in tears. She said the last time her daughter called her was Wednesday night. “They haven’t told us anything,” she said.

With its archaeological sites and Red Sea resorts, Egypt is a traditional destination for Western tourists. But the industry has been badly hit by the downing of a Russian Metrojet flight last October, in which all 224 people on board were killed, as well as by an Islamist insurgency and a string of bomb attacks.

Other countries offered to help in the investigation, including the United States, where engine maker Pratt & Whitney is based.

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For many former convicts, punishment extends far beyond the time they spent in prison.

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By James M. Dorsey

Two recent incidents involving the refusal of Arab teams to play their Palestinian counterparts on Palestinian soil highlight the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) willingness to play politics at the Palestinians’ expense at times with the connivance of the Palestine Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

The incidents further spotlight the consequences of the incestuous relationship between sports and politics that is nowhere more pervasive than in the Middle East. The AFC like other international sports associations propagates the fiction that the two are separate even if the politics that underlie its recent decisions and those of the Palestine Authority at times appear to contradict one another.

In the latest incident, the AFC handed a victory to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad by endorsing the refusal of two Syrian clubs, Al Jaish, the soccer team owned by the Syrian military, and Al Wahda, to play their Palestinian counterparts in Palestine because it would involve crossing an Israeli border post. Israel controls the Palestine Authority’s West Bank borders.

Clubs from other Arab countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, including Iraq, Oman, and Bahrain, have had no problem with passing through an Israeli border post to play their Asian Cup matches in Palestine.

The Syrian refusal followed an earlier Syrian advisory that its home matches would have to be played on neutral ground because of the brutal civil war in Syria. The Assad regime has used the participation in regional and international competitions of its national soccer team and clubs from areas of Syria that it controls to project a notion of normalcy and government control despite the carnage wracking the country.

The AFC’s endorsement of the Syrian position meant that Palestinian clubs Al Dahria and Ahli AlKhalil had to secure a neutral venue for their Asian Cup home matches even though it was a Syrian refusal that was putting the games in jeopardy.

AlKhalil was ordered by the AFC to find a neutral host country for its match against Al Jaish, sign a financial agreement, and secure visas for the Syrian club within a matter of days. The AFC awarded the match to Al Jaish and penalized AlKhalil with three penalty points when the Palestinian club failed to secure a neutral venue on time.

The penalizing of Dahria for its failure to play Al Wahda seems even more egregious. In contrast to AlKhalil, Dahria finalized arrangements for its match to be played in Lebanon. Seven Dahria players and the team’s fitness coach were detained on arrival at Beirut airport and deported because they were carrying both Palestinian and Israeli travel documents even though they were entering Lebanon on their Palestinian passports only.

The Palestinian clubs were penalized despite the fact that the Palestinian Ministry of Civil Affairs certified in response to an AFC request that nothing prohibited Syrians from entering Palestine, according to a chronology of events presented to by the PFA to the AFC’s legal committee.

“One word describes it all: unfair,” said Susan Shalabi Molano, head of the Palestine Football Association’s international relations committee and a member of the AFC’s executive committee.

In a similar endorsement of political interference in soccer, the AFC failed to intervene when Mr. Abbas’ Authority bowed to Saudi pressure, including a phone call to the Palestinian president by Saudi King Salman, to move an earlier match between Saudi Arabia and Palestine to a neutral venue.

Mr. Abbas, supported by an official of world soccer body FIFA dispatched to Palestine to inspect the situation, spared the kingdom being penalized for its refusal to play in Palestine by certifying despite objections from the PFA that Palestine could not guarantee the security of the Palestinian players.

It was unclear why security was not an issue in the case of Oman, Bahrain and Iraq. The AFC and FIFA’s reluctance to intervene in and effectively condone what was blatant political interference by King Salman and Mr. Abbas is all the more remarkable given Saudi Arabia’s willingness to cooperate with Israel in confronting Iran and to allow senior members of its ruling family and retired military officers to meet publicly with Israeli officials and former officers.

The AFC’s penalizing of the Palestinian clubs and its handling of the Saudi affair seems in line with its recent suggestion that national soccer associations should not be penalized for political interference by governments because that is beyond their control and harmed clubs and grassroots football. FIFA recently lifted a ban on Indonesia while maintaining the barring of Kuwait on charges of government interference.

“Our Member Associations (MAs) are being punished for actions which are outside their control. It is not that the members have broken the rules but they are suspended because of the decisions taken by their governments. It is extremely damaging for the members, who are not only banned from playing international football but also lose their grassroots funding. Development is being hugely affected in these MAs through lost income from their sponsors, as well as funding from the AFC and FIFA. This, in turn, leads to staff losses and cancelled projects,” said Mariano V. Araneta Jr, chairman of an AFC taskforce that looked at intrusions in the running of national soccer associations.

The AFC’s presumption that national soccer associations are victims rather than accessories, if not participants in political interference, is belied by the fact that most Middle Eastern and North African governing bodies are managed by members of ruling families or executives with close ties to government.

The implicit call in the taskforce’s conclusion would effectively give those executives a blank check and deprive bodies like FIFA and AFC from much of the leverage they have. It would in effect legitimize the politics surrounding the Saudi and Palestinian cases. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the AFC’s suggestion effectively goes further, allowing the Palestinian government to impose its will on the Palestinian soccer association.

Playing politics means that the AFC and FIFA apply their rules selectively as is obvious in the case of both the Palestinian clubs and the Saudis. Both cases spotlight the need for international sports associations to drop the fiction of a separation of sports and politics, acknowledge the inextricable relationship between the two, and introduce a mechanism that transparently governs their inseparable bond.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a just published book with the same title.

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