Article Published in Irish News

Two years after his son disappeared, Cormac Boomer tells Liz Trainor he thinks a cover-up is in place.

A FORMER west Belfast councillor, whose son went missing after a mysterious plane crash off the coast of Tunisia two years ago, claims there has been a diplomatic over-up over the incident.

Dessie Boomer (39) went missing along with five others from the ill-fated Piper Lance, flight 9H-ABU, on the morning of December 3, 1995.

The plane, carrying oil rig engineers who were working in Libya. was enroute from Djerba in Tunisia to the island of Malta.

Mr. Boomer was planning a Christmas reunion with his wife Mandy and five children at their Banbridge home.

But the charter flight never reached its destination. Investigators claimed that the plane crashed after recovering pieces of wreck-age from the sea but no bodies were ever recovered.

Two years later his baffled father, Cormac says he is still trying to unravel events surrounding the disappearance of the flight that December morning.

"Every time I try to get close to the circumstances surrounding the event I come up against a diplomatic stone wall.

I believe there is a cover-up between the British, Maltese and Tunisian governments over what happened that morning", Mr. Boomer claimed.

He believes the plane was sabotaged and has his own theory to explain why, after two years of delving into the circumstances surrounding the incident, he said he now believes that his son and the others on board were kidnapped by a Libyan anti-government mafia gang in retaliation over an undercover diplomatic incident.

Mr. Boomer, who is conducting a painstaking search with the families of others missing from the flight, says he will not give up until he has firm evidence that his son died in a crash.

Wreckage from the flight and some of the pilot’s personal belongings were recovered from the sea by Tunisian fishermen but Mr. Boomer claims the evidence appeared nine months after the reported crash.

"There is no evidence to suggest that he was on that flight", Mr Boomer said.

"During the inquiry documentation of a recorded conversation with the pilot suggested that there were only two people on board with him.

And the evidence recovered at the scene. in my view as an engineer, is not wreckage from the plane."

Mr Boomer, who has been to Malta on six occasions to attend the inquiry, said he believes all the evidence points to a "cover-up".

He said: “There was a five-nation search for the plane after it disappeared and nothing was found yet nine months later they come up with pieces of wreckage recovered by two fishermen who no-one has seen or spoken to.

“As well as that I have had no response from any of the organisations which l have contacted officially. They don’t even come back.”

He has, however, called in the support