Dutch Report Assails Crash Response

A Dutch parliamentary report Thursday on the 1992 crash of an El Al cargo jet in an Amsterdam suburb accused government leaders of gross negligence for failing to protect or inform those exposed to toxic fumes at the crash site.

The report on a six-month probe into allegations of bungling and cover-up also confirmed a “direct relationship” between the doomed Israeli jet’s cargo, which included components of sarin nerve gas, and mysterious illnesses now afflicting hundreds of people who were at the scene.

Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok’s two chief deputies said they would resign if targeted for criticism, a move that could trigger a crisis in the coalition government and topple Kok as well. But political fallout from the scandal was staved off by the parliamentary commission’s call to delay debate on its report for a month.

Dutch media noted on the eve of the nearly 2,000-page report’s release that lawmakers were likely to avoid creating a leadership crisis with a public already unsettled over Dutch forces’ involvement in North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes against Yugoslavia.

But the report pulled no punches in lambasting the Dutch transportation and health ministries--then respectively headed by current Deputy Prime Ministers Annemarie Jorritsma and Els Borst--for insensitivity to victims’ claims of ill health, failure to pass along vital information about the plane’s cargo to rescue workers and others at the crash site, shoddy work on the original government investigation of the crash, and underestimation of the health and psychological effects of the disaster on residents of suburban Bijlmermeer.

The inquiry committee, headed by lawmaker Theo Meijer, also condemned as “incomprehensible” the Israeli airline’s failure to assist in the original probe after its 747 cargo jet loaded with toxic chemicals and depleted uranium slammed into a high-rise apartment building in the suburb, which is populated mostly by immigrants. The official death toll was 43, but Bijlmermeer residents contend there were more fatalities from the Oct. 4, 1992, crash, as many victims were unregistered illegal immigrants.

The report orders the government to provide all assistance to the hundreds now suffering conditions ranging from chronic nausea to neurological disorders and cancer.

“The commission finds that there is a direct relationship between health complaints and the disaster in the Bijlmermeer,” the report stated. “Tardiness and underestimation on the part of local and national government ultimately caused an increase in the number and severity of the medical complaints.”

The investigators labeled authorities negligent for failing to launch a criminal investigation into the disappearance of the flight’s cockpit voice and data recorders, which were recovered from the crash scene by firefighters but mysteriously disappeared after transfer to the El Al terminal.

Public “disquiet” concerning the crash aftermath also was exacerbated by “uncontradicted conspiracy theories,” the report noted, including the government’s failure to identify men probing the fiery rubble in white fireproof suits as emergency workers. Witnesses speculated that the men, who parachuted onto the scene after the area had been cleared of onlookers, were Israeli intelligence agents seeking to remove crucial evidence.

Members of a citizens group that has been working for years to learn the truth about the El Al incident declared themselves largely satisfied by the report’s findings.

“We feel relieved that this report establishes the facts and records the mistakes of responsible people,” said Lony Wesseling, an activist with the Working Group-Flight Traffic. “Most important is that now there are good procedures established for dealing with emergencies in the future.”