Pubdate: Sun, 22 Apr 2001
Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Copyright: 2001 Associated Press
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/27
Author: Rick Vecchio

RELATIVES: PERU PLANE HAD CLEARANCE

LIMA, Peru -- A plane carrying American missionaries that apparently was 
mistaken for a drug flight and shot down over the Amazon had received 
clearance to land and moments later Peru's air force fired on it without 
warning, relatives said Sunday.

The relatives' comments were at odds with a version by Peru's military that 
the plane failed to identify itself and was flying without a flight plan in 
an area frequented by drug traffickers.

Missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and her infant daughter, Charity, 
were both killed by the Peruvian gunfire Friday, apparently by a single 
bullet that passed through the woman's body and entered the child's skull 
as she sat on her mother's lap, her brother-in-law said.

The single-engine plane, which was being tracked by a U.S. counter-drug 
surveillance plane, had contacted the air tower in the jungle city of 
Iquitos and received landing clearance about 10 minutes before it was 
downed, said Richmond Donaldson, father of pilot Kevin Donaldson.

"Here was a plane following a regular route. Drug runners do not follow 
regular routes," he said.

"There was the contact with the tower that these other planes should have 
heard," the pilot's father said. "They should have checked the plane's 
numbering. It was just recently registered."

After being hit by the gunfire, the Cessna 135 crash-landed in the Amazon 
River near the jungle town of Huanta, some 626 miles northeast of Lima. The 
survivors clung to the pontoons in the river waters. Peruvians rescued the 
pilot, 42-year-old Kevin Donaldson, who suffered a crushed leg bone and 
severed arteries in his foot caused by the gunfire, and the husband and son 
of the woman killed in the shooting.

The husband, Jim Bowers, 37, was debriefed by Peruvian authorities before 
returning home to North Carolina on Sunday with the couple's 6-year-old 
son, Cory. Donaldson was reportedly headed to a Philadelphia hospital for 
surgery.

U.S. officials announced late Saturday that drug interdiction flights over 
Peru were being suspended pending a full investigation.

A key dispute is whether the seaplane had a flight plan when it took off 
Friday morning from a section of the Amazon River where Peru, Brazil and 
Colombia are separated.

President Bush said Sunday that U.S. officials at the time of the attack 
had been helping Peru's military identify possible drug smugglers by 
providing information, such as tail numbers for planes without a flight plan.

"Our role was top simply to pass on information," Bush said in Quebec, 
where he was attending the Summit of the Americas.

A U.S. government official in Washington, speaking on condition of 
anonymity, said that an American anti-drug surveillance plane alerted 
Peruvians that the missionaries' plane was operating without a flight plan 
in airspace frequented by drug runners. He said it was up to Peruvian 
officials to then identify the plane's intentions and, he said, they 
mistakenly decided it was carrying drugs.

Under current agreements, Peru can use U.S. data only to attack a plane 
that is flying without a flight plan. Peruvian fighters must first try to 
make radio contact and visually signal a suspect aircraft to land for 
inspection before opening fire. If the pilot balks, warning shots must be 
fired.

"None of that was done," said Jim Bowers' older brother, Phil, a trained 
pilot who sat in on his brother's debriefing by Peruvian authorities.

The Peruvian air force, which has expressed regret for the incident, said 
in a statement Saturday that the missionary plane entered Peruvian air 
space unannounced from Brazilian territory and was fired upon after 
Donaldson failed to respond to "international procedures of identification 
and interception."

Phil Bowers disputed that version. "There was no communication. It happened 
very fast. The planes flew by first, did some swooping, and then came in 
from behind and started shooting," he told The Associated Press in Iquitos, 
625 miles northeast of Lima.

One plane, he said, kept firing as the survivors clung to the wreckage in 
the water. "We've got hundreds of witnesses from the shore, Peruvians who 
were watching from the village of Huanta," he said. The U.S. surveillance 
plane also witnessed the air attack, he added.

"Why didn't they call and check the registration?" he said. "Sounds like a 
bunch of vigilante, hot shot pilots. Either that or someone higher up 
ordered the pilots to shoot."

Mario Justo, chief of Iquitos' airport, told The Associated Press on 
Saturday that the plane had a flight plan and that its pilot was in radio 
contact with Iquitos' airport control tower.

He later "clarified" his statement, saying a flight plan was only 
established at 10:48 a.m. when Donaldson radioed his position, about 45 
minutes after Peru's air force says the plane was first detected. Justo 
said Donaldson indicated he had taken off from Islandia, a Peruvian river 
town just across from Brazil.

The missionaries were shot down about 10 minutes later, according to 
Richmond Donaldson, who said that he saw a copy of a flight plan Saturday, 
which he believes his son submitted before making the flight.
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MAP posted-by: Beth