The British Ministry of Defence's official verdict on the Chinook helicopter crash in which many of the North's key police and military intelligence personnel died was "fundamentally flawed", according to a new report.
The latest edition of the magazine Computer Weekly claims that statements by British government ministers and the MoD to the House of Commons on the issue were either misleading or inaccurate. The Alliance Party yesterday called for a public inquiry into the crash.
A total of 29 people - 25 anti-paramilitary experts and four crew members - were killed when the RAF helicopter crashed five years ago. It had been travelling from RAF Aldergrove when it plunged into a hillside on Scotland's Mull of Kintyre.
The MoD's military aircraft accident investigation report blamed pilot error. However, Computer Weekly's investigation describes the verdict of gross negligence against the two dead pilots as "fundamentally flawed" and says it "diverted attention away from the fact that the aircraft should not have been allowed to fly at that time".
Computer Weekly "found the technical investigation into the cause of the crash was partly based on incomplete information and did not review potentially vital evidence because crash investigators had not been given all the facts".
The magazine says the investigators were not told of other previous serious incidents and long-running difficulties with the Chinook, especially its computer software. The British government has insisted there was no evidence of a technical malfunction.