EGYPTIAN investigators privately agreed with an earlier US report blaming the October 1999 crash of an EgyptAir plane in which 217 people died on suicide, according to Newsweek on Sunday. EgyptAir’s managing director Mohamed Fahim Rayyan has rejected the theory of a suicide by the plane’s co-pilot, Gamil al-Battuti. The National Transportation Safety Board is to release its final report on the crash, which concludes that Battuti caused the Boeing to dive into the Atlantic shortly after take-off from New York on October 13, 1999, killing all on board, Newsweek said. Reporting that US intelligence secretly monitored communications between Cairo and an Egyptian investigation team in Washington, the magazine said “intercepts reveal that despite their public stance, the Egyptian investigators privately agreed with their US counterparts that suicide was the likely cause” of the crash. Egyptian authorities have demanded the report be based on facts alone, and according to Newsweek insist the crash was caused by a mechanical problem. – AFP