Press Releases

May 7, 2007

Anthony Mitchell

AP reporter who covered Africa with passion dies in plane crash returning from assignment

By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Anthony Mitchell, among the 114 people that an official said were killed in a plane crash over the weekend in Cameroon, was a dogged Associated Press correspondent from Britain with a passion for Africa and for uncovering challenging stories. He had been on assignment to investigate the criminal trade in endangered species for food.

Mitchell, 39, had just spent a week in the Central African Republic, where he visited markets that sold elephant meat and chimps and gorillas to international smugglers. His stories were to be published before an international conference on the topic next month.

"We are all devastated," said Catherine Fitzgibbon, his wife, in a statement on behalf of Mitchell's family. "Anthony was a fantastic father, husband and son. He was the life and soul of every party with a wonderful dry wit and a great sense of humor. He lived life to the full and died doing the job he loved."

Mitchell made global headlines last month with his in-depth investigation into the illegal detention and transfer of terror suspects from Kenya to Somalia and eventually into Ethiopian prisons. His work forced U.S. and Ethiopian officials to acknowledge a program that until then had led to the secret detention of dozens of people, including women and children.

Human rights groups praised the story, which won an internal AP award for breaking news, but it was stridently criticized by the Ethiopian government as coming from an "ivory tower" where the war on terror was not understood. It was not the first time Mitchell's stories angered Ethiopian authorities.

During the May 2005 election, Mitchell repeatedly uncovered government efforts to influence the vote's outcome and obtained secret European Union reports that detailed allegations of rigging.

In January 2006, the Ethiopian government expelled him for what it called hostile reporting. The expulsion was roundly condemned by press freedom groups around the world. He became a staff reporter for AP in the Nairobi bureau the following August.

On Sunday, contributors to Ethiopian political Web sites posted tributes to Mitchell, praising him as a dedicated journalist who courageously reported the truth.

"Anthony was an extraordinarily talented and dedicated journalist," said AP President and CEO Tom Curley. "His loss will be deeply felt at AP and to anyone who cares about Africa and its future."

"He was one of our top reporters in Africa," said John Daniszewski, the AP international editor in New York. "We will never forget the sacrifice he made and the courage he showed in Ethiopia and on his other assignments."

Mitchell was born in Chertsey, England and moved to Africa in 2001 with Fitzgibbon to work and live in Ethiopia where she was an aid worker. He soon became one of the most widely respected journalists in the country.

He first contributed to the Associated Press in 2001 and as a freelancer in Ethiopia also contributed to The Times of London, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent. He became AP's Ethiopia correspondent in 2003.

Before moving to Ethiopia, he worked for the Daily Express from 1996-2001, covering international affairs, particularly the conflicts in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Mitchell covered London courts and national news events for the National News Agency in London from 1995-1996. His first journalism job began in 1993, as a reporter for The Richmond and Twickenham Times.

Mitchell graduated from York University in 1993, where he studied philosophy and politics.
"Wherever he has worked in the world he has made new friends and earned respect for acts of personal kindness and his professional integrity," Fitzgibbon said. "Anthony also had a very gentle, caring side; he was devoted to his family and our two gorgeous children."

He is survived by Fitzgibbon, son Tom, 3, daughter Rose, 1, parents John and Jackie Mitchell and his sister Jo Jotischky.

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May 8, 2007

asap LEGACY: Remembering a fallen colleague

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May 11, 2007

Reconstructing the last moments of Kenya Airways Flight 507

By SLOBODAN LEKIC
Associated Press Writer

DOUALA, Cameroon (AP) -- Three jetliners sat ready for takeoff at Douala International Airport, their crews waiting for a massive thunderstorm to move away.

Just a few minutes past midnight, all three radioed air traffic control to check the weather report. They were told the storm would take another hour to dissipate, and the Cameroon Airlines and Royal Air Maroc crews opted to wait it out.

But Capt. Francis Mbatia Wamwea of Kenya Airways Flight 507, already delayed for an hour and carrying scores of passengers with connections to catch, judged the weather had improved sufficiently to permit departure for Nairobi, Kenya.

It was a fateful decision that investigators believe may have cost the lives of the nine crew and 105 passengers on board the Boeing 737-800, which was ensnared in the raging storm this past Saturday and crashed into the jungle less than a minute after takeoff.

After Wamwea gave the go-ahead, the Kenyan Airways crew radioed the tower, pulled away from the gate and taxied toward Runway 12, heading roughly southwest from the airport.

Douala tower cleared the flight for takeoff a few minutes later, instructing it to report on reaching 5,000 feet.

The pilot acknowledged. It was not clear what time that final voice transmission was received from the plane.

The plane nose-dived into a swamp on the outskirts of Cameroon's commercial hub just 30 seconds after becoming airborne, killing all aboard. The passengers included Cameroonian merchants, an American AIDS expert, businesspeople from China, India and South Africa, a Tanzanian returning from peacekeeping duties in Ivory Coast, a U.N. refugee worker from Togo. Anthony Mitchell, a Nairobi-based correspondent for The Associated Press, was among the victims.

The 6-month-old plane was among the newer models of the world's most popular airliner. Boeing's 737-800s have an excellent safety record; this is only the second time a 737-800 has crashed with the loss of all on board. Last September, an airliner belonging to Brazil's Gol airline collided in mid-air with an executive jet over the Amazon jungle.

One Cameroonian investigator and a government pilot assisting the probe, both speaking on condition of anonymity because fact-finding is still under way, said Wamwea's decision to depart into one of the violent tropical storms that regularly ravages parts of equatorial Africa during the rainy season was most likely the pivotal factor in a sequence of events that led to the crash.

In Kenya Friday, Kenya Airways chief executive Titus Naikuni said investigators would have to make the final assessment. The probe was likely to take months.

"We don't want to start speculating here," he said. "So whether the pilot did the wrong thing or the right thing, I cannot answer that."

Flight crews are responsible for the decision whether to take off or land in bad weather, usually depending on guidelines prescribed by their airline. And while air traffic control can take measures to prevent flights, including closing down airports, such drastic measures are highly unusual outside the northern hemisphere where heavy winter snows can block runways and bring traffic to a standstill.

Douala airport is not equipped with weather radar, but the 737-800 is. Pilots routinely take off into stormy weather and then rely on radar to guide them around the towering cumulonimbus thunderheads that can cause structural damage to airframes.

Wamwea, 53, was an experienced flyer with about 8,500 hours on jets. He had joined Kenya Airways 20 years ago and enjoyed the reputation of a diligent and professional pilot.

The co-pilot, Andrew Kiuru, was only 23. He joined the airline a year ago after completing flight school in South Africa.

The cockpit voice recorder has not yet been found, so no details of the final exchanges between Wamwea and Kiuru are available. It remains unclear which man was flying the plane at the time, but Wamwea would have been the ultimate authority.
The flight data recorder has been recovered.

Two minutes after Flight 507 would have been expected to reach 5,000 feet, the point at which it had been instructed to check in, Douala Area Control Center issued a distress message. This is normal practice by air traffic control when unable to immediately establish contact with an aircraft, a fairly frequent occurrence. But controllers, who had lost sight of the plane fairly quickly because of the storm, were not unduly worried because the plane had fuel for six hours flying time.

A search was launched at 2:44 a.m. when a French radar station sent in a message that an airplane distress signal had been picked up. A Cameroonian air force plane and two helicopters first flew over a region far to the south, basing their search on the distress signal which was in fact hundreds of kilometers (miles) away from the actual crash.

It is unclear why the signal was so far off the mark, but it appears the plane's emergency locator beacon's final signal was garbled -- indicating a false position.

And although the crash site is virtually beneath the flight path for planes taking off from Douala, nobody saw it because of the jungle canopy that covers the area.

The wreckage was found 40 hours after the plane took off by a local hunter who chanced upon it in a mangrove swamp and reported it to the air force. It was just 3.4 miles from Runway 12. Using speed calculations, experts estimate the plane had been in the air for just 30 seconds and had never climbed over 3,000 feet.

Villagers living near the swamp said they heard planes passing overhead during the night, and a particularly loud boom which sounded like a thunderbolt.

Since there were no witnesses to the crash itself, investigators have pieced together the known facts and formulated several theories on what could have happened.

The wreckage in the thick jungle indicated the plane flew nose-first into the ground at a nearly 90 degree angle. It was found buried deep in a crater of reddish-brown muck with only tiny bits of the rear fuselage and wings left above ground. Trees nearby were smashed, but otherwise the jungle canopy remains intact, making the site almost invisible from the air.
Investigators said the nose-dive indicated that a violent gust of wind within a thundercloud may have flipped the airliner over, throwing it into a fatal dive. Although modern jets can usually fly through storm clouds, storms in Africa are particularly violent at this time of the year, investigators said.

The crash site also indicates the pilot was maneuvering at the time, banking sharply to the right. This would have exposed the raised left wing to the gust, investigators said.

The low altitude would have made it impossible to recover from the resulting dive.
Investigators said they cannot yet discount other factors, including mechanical failure, pilot disorientation or even sabotage. But no sign of a blast or fire has been found so far by the search teams, which include seven experts from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and two Boeing representatives.

Investigators say it will likely take months to collect and analyze the evidence. They said a final report on the crash would probably not be completed this year.
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On the Net:
http://www.kenya-airways.com

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May 14, 2007


Thousands attend national memorial service for 114 victims of plane crash in Cameroon

By TOM MALITI
Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Kenya's president joined thousands Monday at an interfaith memorial service in the Kenyan capital for 114 victims of a plane crash in Cameroon.

Relatives of nine Kenya Airways crew members lit candles in memory of their loved ones against a background of small paper flags representing 27 countries whose nationals perished in the crash.

On stage was a montage of the 27 flags circling photos of the nine crew members who died when, on May 5, a Kenya-bound Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 nose-dived into a swamp seconds after taking off from Cameroon's commercial capital, Douala. All 114 people on board died.

The passengers included Cameroonian merchants, an American AIDS expert, businesspeople from China, India and South Africa, a Tanzanian returning from peacekeeping duties in Ivory Coast and a U.N. refugee worker from Togo. Anthony Mitchell, a Nairobi-based correspondent for The Associated Press, was among the victims.

A children's group of the Hindu Council of Kenya and three choirs from different Christian denominations sang hymns before speeches.

"A light has gone out of your life and there is darkness. We share the trauma of your pain and loss ... We will do all we can to ease the unfathomable pain," the families are undergoing, said Kenya Airways Chairman Evanson Mwaniki.

"As a nation, we are united in grief with 26 other countries whose nationals perished in the tragic plane crash," President Mwai Kibaki told those gathered. "It is often the case that following such tragic events, family members ask many questions which may not have immediate satisfactory answers ... As humans, we can only share the grief with those who have been directly affected by this calamity. It is God who is able to reach deep into their hearts and minds in order to give them courage and strength to overcome the pain."
Hindu, Muslim and Christian religious leaders all said prayers to close the service.

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June 6, 2007

Poaching for elephant meat becoming major threat to survival of forest herds in Central Africa

By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- The markets in the Central African Republic offer all of the jungle's delicacies, including monkey, chimpanzee, antelope and, if you have the cash, even elephant.
Hunters kill the elephants and cut off the ivory. Then, over grills fueled with green tree branches, they smoke the meat for a day, charring the outside to preserve it for the trip to town. The main market is in Africa, where elephant meat is considered a delicacy and where increasing populations have increased demand.

Most people believe international demand for ivory is the biggest threat to elephants. But while wildlife experts are meeting in the Netherlands through June 16 to discuss the ban on the ivory trade, forest elephants -- perhaps the most endangered elephant species in the world -- are being hunted to extinction not only for their tusks, but for their meat.

"These elephants get poached a lot more than the eastern and southern African elephants," said Karl Amman, a wildlife photographer and investigator into the illegal trade in animals. "I am convinced the poaching of forest elephants in the Central African region is for the meat and ivory has become a byproduct."

In the markets of Bangui, ivory earns a poacher about $13.60 a pound. Smoked elephant meat brings $5.45 a pound, considerably more than any other kind of meat, including beef or pork.
A typical forest elephant, which weighs 5,000 to 6,000 pounds and produces 1,000 or so pounds of edible meat, can earn a poacher up to $180 for the ivory and as much as $6,000 for the meat. The average income for an African in the Congo Basin is about $1 a day.

People in the forest live in such poverty they do not have time to think about animal conservation, said Andrea Turkalo, a researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society who works in the Dzangha-Sangha National Park.

"This country can't run their health dispensaries, they can't educate their children, how can you expect them to think about conservation?" she said. "I think people are still killing for ivory, but there has been a shift in the meat trade because of the human demographics. There are a lot more people here."

Gabriel Mabele, chief of Mosapula village, said creation of the Dzangha-Sangha National Park and a ban on hunting elephants there has meant his people have less meat to eat, but people still want to eat elephant.

"You can't just openly put it out in the market, you have to be secretive about it," he said. "But the hunting continues."

Omer Kokamenko, a ranger at Dzangha-Sangha National Park, also said elephant hunting has become more about the meat.

"When someone kills an elephant whose tusks don't weigh more than 500 grams (one pound), it's not for the tusks -- it's especially for the meat," said Kokamenko, who lives deep in the forest. "Outside this region (in the city), elephant meat is expensive."

Forest elephants are different from their cousins that roam the savannas of eastern and southern Africa, where most are protected by rangers. Forest elephants are smaller and darker, their tusks are straighter and their ears are more oval. They range from Guinea to Uganda, but are mostly concentrated in the Congo Basin, where poverty and war are common.

Little is known about forest elephants because they live in small groups within dense rain forests. In 1989, wildlife biologists estimated the forest elephant population of the Congo Basin at 172,000.

There have been no comprehensive studies since then, but a Wildlife Conservation Society study of six elephant areas in national parks released in April found "a combination of illegal killing and other human disturbance has had a profound impact on forest elephant abundance and distribution."

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species banned trade in ivory in 1989, but some African nations won permission to sell ivory in 1999. Another sale was authorized in 2002.

Amman said the focus on the ivory trade overlooks the bigger issue of the sale of elephant meat. Amman, joined by a journalist from The Associated Press, was able to document how wildlife meat, including elephant, is being sold across the border between the Central African Republic and Congo.

Government officials on both sides collect taxes on the trade, even though the business is illegal under international law. Tax collectors and more senior officials declined to answer questions about the trade or tax system.

Until governments act, the elephant population will remain in danger, Amman said.
"Better law enforcement and better governance is the underlying issue of most of the problems in Central Africa," Amman said.

Desire Loa, a former park ranger who turned poacher, said the trade is so profitable that government officials are behind most poaching, hiring Pygmies and providing them with rifles to kill elephants.

"It's important officials who pay for this now, and take Pygmies to be the hunters .... because they're the ones who have money," he said. "You might find me guilty today. They'll put the handcuffs on me and take me (to jail) in town.

But Loa said he would not be there for long.

"The prosecutor will tell me, tonight you'll spend the night here," he said. But later he'll "give me back my weapons and tell me to go back to work ... people are against conservation. They go back to the forest every time."
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Associated Press writer Anthony Mitchell contributed to this story from Bangui, Central African Republic, before his death in a jetliner crash.

Updated June 7, 2007