Joseph Fitsanakus of Intel News writes:
One of Mauridania’s leading daily newspapers, Al-Huriyeh, says that the spy ring, which allegedly consisted “businessmen and activists [from] several Arab nationalities”, was uncovered following the arrest of one of its members, identified as Fares al-Banna. A Jordanian citizen of Palestinian extraction, al-Banna was arrested for larceny, which eventually lead to a warrant issued for searching his premises. Upon searching his house, authorities reportedly found a handwritten letter, addressed to the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates in Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, in which al-Banna claimed had been recruited by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. In the letter, al-Banna also claimed that he had participated in the January 2010 assassination of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. The letter also alleges that al-Banna helped Mossad carry out a bombing of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET409, which blew up in mid-air on January 24, 2010, five minutes after taking off from Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport, en route to Addis Ababa. Al-Huriyeh reports that al-Banna’s letter suggests the Mossad blew up the plane in order to kill one or more Hezbollah targets who were on board.
There is a minor issue with that report in that the plane did not blew up. According to the Lebanese investigation progress report (pdf) from February 10, 2011 the plane did not "blew up" but ditched into the sea after some very unusual maneuvering.
The [flight] recorders data revealed that ET 409 encountered two stick shakers respectively at time 00:40:01 for a period of 29” and at 00:40:56 for a period of 26”. 10 “Bank Angle” warnings were registered between 00:38:41 and 00:40:54; an over-speed clacker was also registered from time 00:41:25 till the end. The maximum registered AOA was 32° at 00:40:14, maximum registered bank angle was 118° Left at 00:41:14, the maximum registered speed was 407.5 knots at 00:41:28, the maximum registered G load was 4.412 at 00:41:28 and the maximum registered nose down pitch value was 63.1° at 00:41:16.
There is no discernible reasons why the pilots might have made these maneuvers. So this may have been an accident in bad weather, sabotage on the plane or something else. The discussion of the incident at the Professional Pilot Rumor Network is inconclusive.
The plane crashed on 25 January 2010.
Moon of Alabama reader Juan Moment pointed me to three videos one Faris al-Banna uploaded to youtube shortly after the incident on February 14 2010 and February 19 2010.
The first one (53 views as of now) shows photos from two men in an office and then of one man standing in a harbor with probably oil installations in the background. He seems to looks quite similar to the one pictured along the Al-Huriyeh piece.
The second (16 views) just show the relevant man filming himself saying nothing with some Arabic background music. In the third video (32 views) the man talks quite earnestly into the camera in Arabic, then turns up some music, then talks again.
The youtube user Faris al-Banna has no other videos. Only those three he uploaded three weeks after the plane crash in Beirut. We do not know for sure if he is the same Faris al-Banna as the man in the Mauredania spy-case though judging from the newspaper picture it could be him.
Neither Juan nor I understand Arabic and we do not know what the man in the video says. It could be a message to a lover or something else. Maybe on of the readers here knows Arabic and will let us know?