In Larnaca, the Cypriot city from which the plane took off, police raided the offices of Helios Airlines, seeking ''evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts," said an official Cypriot government spokesman, Marios Karoyian.
Aviation officials have said the plane appeared to have lost pressure suddenly, causing a rapid loss of oxygen on board. In that case, passengers and flight crew would have had only seconds to put on oxygen masks before losing consciousness amid subzero temperatures. Death would be likely minutes after the loss of oxygen.
But two fighter jet pilots who scrambled to intercept the plane saw the copilot slumped over, the oxygen masks in the plane dangling, and two unidentified people trying to take control of the plane. The pilot was not in his seat when the plane crashed, about 2 1/2 hours after the crew first radioed in about air conditioning problems, officials said.
The fire department has said that none of those who died wore oxygen masks.
Athens's chief coroner, Fillipos Koutsaftis, said he could not determine whether the six people whose bodies were examined were conscious when the Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 plunged 34,000 feet into a mountainous area near the village of Grammatiko, 25 miles north of Athens.
''Our conclusion is they had circulation and were breathing at the time of death," Koutsaftis said.
Officials in the coroner's office said autopsies on another six bodies would be likely to show similar results. They asked not be named because the results had not yet been publicly released.
Greek and Cypriot officials have ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash.
Investigators, to be joined by US specialists, were sending the plane's data and cockpit voice recorders to France for expert examinations.
But the head of Greece's airline safety committee, Akrivos Tsolakis, said the voice recorder was damaged and might not ''give us the information we need."
The pilots of two Greek Air Force F-16 fighter planes, scrambled to intercept the plane after it lost contact with air traffic control shortly after entering Greek airspace, said they saw the co-pilot slumped over the controls.
