IRNA - EP-3

[The OSINT Group]

Following text is taken from IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency of Iran.
Aint the use of language interesting?
They write "freed" and "detained".

dm.

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Freed U.S spy plane crew arrive in Honolulu from China

 Honolulu, April 12, IRNA -- The 24 crew members of an American spy
plane arrived in Honolulu on Thursday morning after being freed from
Hainan island, where they had been detained since the April 1
collision between their plane and a Chinese jet fighter, Japanese news
agency Kyodo reported.
    The agency quoted U.S. officials as saying that a U.S. air force
C-17 transport carrying the crew landed at the Hickam air force base
at 6:20 a.m. local time, nearly 17 hours after they flew out of the
southern Chinese island.
     The crew -- 21 men and three women -- will undergo three days of
debriefing in Honolulu as well as medical and psychological checks,
the agency said.
     After the debriefing, the crew will be flown to their home base
in the state of Washington.
     The Chinese government released the air crew after Washington
said it was ''very sorry'' for the aircraft's entry into Chinese
airspace without permission and for the death of the Chinese pilot
whose fighter went down after colliding the South China Sea.
     The crippled U.S. navy's EP-3 reconnaissance plane still sits on
the tarmac of the Lingshui military airfield on Hainan, where the spy
plane landed on April 1.
     Under the terms of the agreement reached by Washington and
Beijing that led China to release the U.S. air crew on
''humanitarian'' grounds, the two countries are scheduled to begin
talks April 18 over the return of the U.S. spy plane and other issues
surrounding the U.S. practice of flying reconnaissance missions off
the Chinese coast.
AK/HR



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