Foreigners Identify Mexico Plane Victims; Arabs Claim Crash Role

Foreign experts arrived Friday to help identify some of the 166 victims of Mexico’s worst air disaster, while authorities analyzed a purported claim that an Arab “suicide martyr” caused the crash to protest U.S. actions against Libya.

The body of a second American, Debra Roth, 51, a teacher from Cleveland, was identified at the government’s Forensic Medical Service, U.S. Embassy spokesman Vince Hovanec said. Authorities earlier identified Peter Rivaud, 5, an American citizen who lived in Mexico City.

Hovanec said three members of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Department were brought in to assist at the forensic service here, where experts from France and Sweden also were working.

Dr. Mario Alva Rodriguez, head of the forensic office, said 145 victims’ bodies have been identified so far.

9 Americans Aboard

Nine Americans were aboard Mexicana’s Flight 940 when the Boeing 727 crashed Monday about 90 miles northwest of Mexico City on a flight to Los Angeles by way of Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan, killing all aboard. The pilot had radioed that the plane was having pressurization problems, but the cause of the crash remains unknown.

Mexicana Airlines had no immediate comment on the claim of responsibility for the plane’s crash, received by news agencies in Beirut and signed by the Arab Revolutionary Brigades and the Egyptian Revolutionaries.

The statement was typewritten in Arabic and accompanied by a photograph of a “suicide martyr” identified as Mohammed Mustafa Mohsen Mashour. No such name was among the 158 listed on the passenger manifest.

Airline spokesman Aulino Perez Martinez said officials were awaiting “all the pertinent information” about the statement, which did not say how the groups had supposedly caused the crash.

Discounts Statement

The government news agency Notimex quoted federal Atty. Gen. Sergio Garcia Ramirez as saying that the claim could not be given serious consideration until investigators at the site finish their work.

Mexican authorities have estimated that it will take 30 to 45 days to determine the cause and have declined to speculate.

Investigators, including a team from Boeing, the plane’s manufacturer, were working in teams studying the wreckage strewn over the mountain.