"I rely on God.”

That’s what Gameel Al-Batouti, the co-pilot of EgyptAir Flight 990, repeated — 11 times in Arabic — before the aircraft he was operating mysteriously plunged into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Massachusetts on Oct. 31, 1999.

That audio, captured by the recovered flight recorder, was a key piece of evidence for U.S. authorities and the National Safety Transportation Board (NTSB), which concluded that Al-Batouti was suicidal and had purposefully brought the airliner down while the first officer was out of the cockpit. The Egyptian Civil Aviation Agency was adamant, however, that mechanical error was to blame and dismissed the NTSB investigation as “flawed and biased.” Egypt still officially denies that Al-Batouti committed suicide.

Now Egypt is once again under scrutiny to deliver answers in the disappearance of EgyptAir Flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean with 66 people on board on May 19. This time, in contrast to past air disasters, the Egyptian government initially suggested that it was terrorism, even though the exact cause of the crash remains unclear and no terrorist group has claimed responsibility. As it has done previously, Cairo appears to want to deflect blame onto other countries. A terrorist attack would reflect poorly on France’s airport security, whereas a technical issue with the plane would leave EgyptAir to blame. But Egyptian officials later walked that suggestion back and disputed reports that the small size of the body parts found indicated that a large explosion had brought down the plane.

The equivocation from Cairo was a reminder anyone expecting to get to the bottom of the tragedy should reflect on Egypt's lack of transparency in previous investigations. “There has been a very checkered past in terms of Egyptian openness,” says says Adam Schiff, a California Congressman and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who has long criticized Egypt’s lack of cooperation in international investigations. “They have not always been open and forthcoming with the investigation results and often have sought to control access to wreckage and the flow of information during the course of the investigation.”

On Monday, in his first public remarks about the disaster, Egyptian President Abel Fattah el-Sisi said the probe will require a lengthy process. “This could take a long time but no one can hide these things. As soon as the results are out people will be informed,” he said.

"If Egypt does not cooperate, the geopolitical fallout could be huge, particularly with the French" — Timothy Kaldas

If Egypt does not cooperate, the geopolitical fallout could be huge, particularly with the French, who are major arms supplier to Egypt, along with a handful of other Western countries, including the U.S. and Britain, says Timothy Kaldas, a fellow at the Tahrir Institute For Middle East Policy, over the phone from Cairo. . “There were a number of French nationals on that plane.”

France and Egypt are in the midst of a proposed $1 billion arms deal that would send not only weapons, but military satellite technology, as well as naval ships to the North African country. With the country battling the Islamic State in the Sinai Valley, Egypt is amassing its firepower to stay on top of the rapidly spreading insurgency problem

The past is not an encouraging guide, however. In October, a Russian Metrojet airliner flying over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, was destroyed by an explosive device mid-air, killing all 224 people on board. A faction of the Islamic State was fast to claim responsibility. Shortly afterward, Russian investigators as well as U.S. and British authorities confirmed this. Yet, Egypt, and the country’s state-run media denied it had been terrorism, presenting the situation as a Western conspiracy to frighten tourists and cripple the country's economy. About five months later, Egypt’s president finally offhandedly admitted that the Metrojet tragedy was terrorist related

This brand of poor crisis management isn’t confined to the skies, either. The country has faced several backlashes from the international community in the past year alone.

In 2015, eight Mexican tourists were killed in the White Desert by Egyptian security forces, who rained down machine gun fire from a helicopter onto a convoy of tourists having a picnic, mistaking them for Islamic militants. The Egyptian government again deflected responsibility, blaming a tour company for trekking off their intended route.

Then, this past February, the body of an Italian graduate student, Giulio Regeni, turned up in a ditch along a desert highway in Egypt. Egyptian security forces were once again suspected in his killing — and torture. Egypt has failed to turn up any conclusive evidence in that investigation, despite condemnation by the Italy and European parliament.

“I think in general, the [Egyptian] government has a problem with transparency,” Kaldas says. “There isn’t really a culture in the political system of being transparent. Transparency is not their forte. There is a tendency to avert blame whenever possible.”

The muddled investigation into Flight 990, especially, left lasting diplomatic scars between the U.S. and Egypt that linger to this day, highlighting how modern aviation have become geopolitical touchstones, especially for relations between countries involved in these investigations.

“There’s so few of these events and they’re so high profile that the willingness of national authorities to cooperate in the wake of these events and making a full and transparent rendering of what’s happened is seen in the diplomatic circles, at the top of governments as almost like a bellwether of the credibility and legitimacy of the government,” says Steven Weber, a University of California Berkeley political science professor.

Experts such as Kaldas say Egypt’s diversion tactics are a way of protecting the country’s fragile economy and its tourism sector. In 2014, tourism accounted for 11.6 percent of Egypt’s $301.5 billion GDP. The Russian airliner that was downed in October leaving the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el Sheikh, which annually attracts about three million Russian tourists alone, dealt the country another staggering blow. The tourist sector, he says, “has already suffered a great deal since the uprising in 2011.”

Russia imposed a travel ban to Egypt following the incident that is still in effect. Tourist arrivals in March of this year fell 47.2 per cent compared to the same time in 2015, with a total of 440,700 travelers according to the Financial Times.

In the case of Flight 804, it appears that some kind of explosion brought the plane down, but in the days since the crash the investigation has proceeded slowly as authorities search for the black box in the Mediterranean. Many observers—including both leading U.S. presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—have pointed to terrorism, and Egyptian authorities were only too glad to point the same way, at least at first.

The possibility of a terrorist attack "is higher than the possibility of having a technical failure,” said Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy during a press conference last week. He later softened that position, urging against jumping to conclusions before all the facts were in. Sisi, in his remarks on Monday, did the same.

Flight 804 left Egypt, traveled to Eritrea, Tunisia, and finally France before disappearing. The flight’s passengers were largely a mix of Egyptian and French nationals.

Kaldas and others say that pressure on Egypt—the perception of its autocratic government of how much aid it needs from the West—could be gradually forcing more openness. In March, a man wearing a fake suicide belt named Seif Eldin Mustafa managed to divert a domestic EgyptAir flight to Cyprus after threatening to blow the airline up. No one was hurt and Mustaf was arrested in Cyprus. Cyprus investigators discovered his suicide belt was made of mobile phone covers. One passenger even posed for a selfie with the hijacker, which went viral, and added to the farcical nature of the situation. Despite the embarrassing incident, Kaldas said Egypt worked quickly to transmit information in a transparent manner.

Of course, since the AirEgypt hijacker was technically not in possession of anything he wasn’t supposed to have, as he crafted his fake bomb out of mobile phone covers, this largely absolved any lapse in security on EgyptAir’s behalf. The country, too, was fast to point out that the ruse was not terrorism-inspired, and that Mustafa was instead mentally distressed. Although it raised some security concerns, many experts speculated that that the incident could have happened on any airline.

It’s a precedent that Kaldas believes will translate to the Flight 804 investigation, especially since the plane didn’t go down in Egypt. “What you see with the Cyprus incident, is a lot more information being communicated in a timely fashion to the press,” Kaldas said. "This isn't about them becoming a better more transparent government. It's about differing circumstances. Moreover the lack of transparency exacerbated the blowback from Metrojet, which may discourage them from repeating such tactics this time.”

Indeed, by Monday President Sisi was no longer using the word “terrorism” or saying any cause was likely at all. “All scenarios are possible,” he said. “So please, it is very important that we do not talk and say there is a specific scenario.”

Dorian Geiger is a Canadian multimedia journalist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been featured in TIME, The New York Times, VICE, the BBC, Narratively, and others. Follow him on Twitter.