The mystery of flight KAL007

The EU leaders gathering in Brussels today to discuss the growing tensions with Russia have chosen an ominous day on which to meet. It is exactly 25 years since Soviet fighter planes shot down a Korean Airlines Boeing 747, with the loss of life of all 269 passengers and crew.

It marked the nadir in East-West relations in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan called it "a crime against humanity (that) must never be forgotten". And even a quarter of a century later, important questions regarding the incident remain unanswered.

Flight KAL007 was en route from New York to Seoul when, 10 minutes after a refuelling stop in Alaska, it started to deviate from its course and head north towards Russian airspace. The plane continued some 200 miles from its planned flight path. Off the Soviet

island of Sakhalin, home to several Soviet military installations, it was shot down by Russian fighters armed with air-to-air missiles.

The Kremlin maintained that the plane had twice violated their airspace. They insisted the airliner had been on a spying mission and their fighter pilots had fired warning shots, but the Korean Airlines pilot did not respond.

Amid international outcry at the Soviet action, it was suggested that a mistake must have been made when programming the plane's inertial navigation system. But if the pilot was genuinely unaware that he was over Soviet airspace, why did he not respond to the Soviet warning shots?

Other mysteries remain: not least, whatever happened to the bodies of the flight's passengers and crew? There was a total absence of human remains - or luggage and