[WATCH] Muscat sticks to government script over plane crash: ‘anti-trafficking mission was under French Customs’

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is insisting that a team of French secret service personnel and two other civilians who died when their turboprop aircraft crashed to the ground shortly after take-off, was part of a French Customs mission to gather trafficking routes intelligence.

Although French Customs has already declared that none of its personnel was aboard the Merlin plane that crashed to the ground on Monday, Muscat said Malta had a written understanding from the French government that the mission was under the auspices of French Customs, with the aim of tracing routes of drug and human trafficking.

“What interests us is that it was done under the auspices of French Customs,” Muscat said on TVM’s Dissett, which airs at 8:45pm, when questioned by head of news Reno Bugeja why personnels from the French DGSE were on board.

READ MORE All our stories on the N577MX plane crash

Prime Minister sticks to official line on 'secret' French intelligence mission

“They would do with any personnel they have at their disposal… we have a written understanding for assistance with the French government, so that their Customs help us, themselves and Europe, to trace routes where thousands of immigrants are passing through, as well as armaments and that can come to Malta.

“When another country is ready to help us by gathering information and help bust drug routes, I am duty-bound to assist.”

Muscat denied the plan for the airplane was to land in Misrata. “Can I, as [head of] a government, refuse assistance to a government helping us bring these criminals to justice? These are situations where we are helping each other.”

But he did not deny that the secret service personnel could have been more interested in other Libyan subjects of influence, such Islamic State or related militias, and stuck to the official government line. “We have no other information,” he said.

Information has so far been blurry on the real mission of the aircraft and its crew.

The plane, belonging to Luxembourg-CAE Aviation, was part of a fleet of planes involved in intelligence gathering missions in North Africa.

Plane used by EUNAVFOR Med

CAE Aviation, based in Luxembourg, acknowledged on Monday that the plane which crashed in Malta – registration N577MX – was one of its aircraft, but said that the doomed flight was part of a mission on behalf of the French Ministry of Defence.

Soon after CAE claimed that the five victims were its employees, involved in a mission on behalf of the ministry of defence, French newspaper Le Monde claimed that the three task-specialists on board the aircraft were in fact members of the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), the French Secret Service, similar to Britain’s MI6 or the American CIA.

Ealier this year CAE had come under the public limelight in France following leaked documents showing that the DGSE was leasing three aircraft from the company to be used in Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) flights. The French ministry of defence’s Directorate for General Armament (DGA) itself had in the past expressed concerns on the quality of the maintenance carried out on the plane earlier this year.

Soon after the plane crashed on Monday, EU commissioner for foreign affairs and security policy Federica Mogherini confirmed that no EU officials were on board the doomed plane.

But the EU has very close ties to CAE Aviation. Luxembourg, in fact, financed two CAE Merlin III aircraft to support the EU’s ATALANTA counter-piracy operation. And the aircraft logged more than 4,000 hours in support of the 2012 EUNAVFOR (EU naval force) mission in Somalia, assistant helicopters and warships.

One of the CAE aircraft on the EUNAVFOR missions had the registration N577MX and was, in fact, the same aircraft that crashed in Malta.

Luxembourg then financed a CAE aircraft to support the 2015 EUNAVFOR mission in the Mediterranean, aimed at combatting trafficking networks.

The Duchy’s defence minister stated last year that the country was using “a company based in Findel (the region in Luxembourg where CAE and Luxembourg Airport are located) to help a European military operation and to collect accurate information on the smugglers operating largely from Libya, their strategy, their means and their business model”.

Malta itself has worked with CAE in the past. In 2009, Luxembourg provided the Armed Forces of Malta Air Wing with a CASA 212 maritime patrol aircraft that it leased from CAE Aviation. The AFM used the aircraft for maritime patrol duties during Frontex’s Nautilus joint operation in the central Mediterranean. The aircraft arrived in Luqa at the end of July 2009 and was operated by an AFM aircrew under the supervision of a CAE instructor.