Athens News Agency: News in English, 05-08-17

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Search continues for remains of three plane crash victims

[01] Search continues for remains of three plane crash victims

Of the 121 people on board - all killed in the crash - 25 have been identified by relatives.

The remains of the victims that cannot be identified will be subject to DNA testing.

President of the Republic of Cyprus Tassos Papadopoulos, who is due to arrive in Athens on Wednesday afternoon, will be visiting the crash site and will then be briefed during a meeting at the Foreign Ministry on the progress of the investigation.

Autopsies, whose results were announced on Monday and Tuesday, revealed that passengers were alive before the crash. However, it has yet to be determined whether they were unconscious or not.

Medical examiners are waiting for the toxilogical reports over the next 10 days to shed more light on the passengers' state before the plane slammed into the mountain.

The Athens Public Prosecutor's Office has requested the testimony of the two F-16 fighter jet pilots who were sent to make visual contact with the Cypriot jetliner when the plane's pilot and crew failed to make radio contact with Athens air controllers.

Cypriot police raided Helios Airways' offices on Monday night to confiscate any documents relevant to the accident, while the Cypriot Parliamentary Committee of Transport and Public Works has decided to proceed with an in-depth investigation into the matter.

According to Papadopoulos, the Cypriot government is continuously in contact with European Union authorities regarding the investigation into the causes of the accident.

He said that he will not hesitate to call in independent experts to help with the investigation in order to discover and to hold accountable whoever is responsible for the accident.

Finally, Yiannis Haralambous, son of the plane's co-pilot, told Cypriot media on Wednesday that had his father revealed what was going on at Helios Airways, the company would now be out of business.

According to Haralambous, his father had confided in his family that the specific aircraft had had problems repeatedly. He also said that his father kept a journal of his flights, a document that would reveal a fair amount of information about the way the company operated.

The journal has not been found.

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