Foreign Confidential ™

A report--read it here--that the pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet that plummeted into the Mediterranean Sea Monday shortly after taking off from Beirut airport in thunderstorms and lightning made a "very fast and strange turn" is fueling speculation that terrorism may have caused the crash, which is believed to have killed all 90 people on board the Boeing 737-800.

The pilot flew in the opposite direction from that recommended by the control tower, which asked him to correct his path before Flight ET409, bound for Addis Ababa, disappeared from the radar.

The pilot's name has not been released. But the turn he took recalls the destruction of EgyptAir 490, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on October 31, 1999, about 60 miles south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, in international waters, killing all of the 217 people on board.

Egyptian investigators concluded that the aircraft crashed as a result of mechanical failure. But U.S. investigators concluded the Boeing 767 was deliberately crashed in an apparent suicide by the 59-year-old co-pilot, Gamil al-Batouti, who had been left in control of the plane when the pilot left the cockpit. The co-pilot's last recorded words were, "Tawfik ala Allah"--Arabic for "I put my faith in God."

Ethiopian Airlines has the best safety record among Africa's notoriously unsafe carriers. But Ethiopia was deeply involved in supporting the government of Somalia, a failed state, against Islamist insurgents and terrorists associated with Al Qaeda.