Wallybird7,
I have read Vasquez, both his 2009 and 2011 analyses. I have read the BEA Meteo France analysis in the first BEA report (an appendix in French only). I have read NASA's re-analysis of the Wx. I have noted AF dispatch's message to the crew alerting them that satellite imagery indicated Cb along their route in the vicinity of TASIL.
In the earlier 'conversation' in this forum on whether they flew into a Cb or not, I believe there is agreement that:
> nobody publicly knows what the gain and tilt of their radar was set at, and what they likely saw.
> nobody can yet accurately characterize the nature of the turbulence experienced earlier, other than the cockpit indicating to the cabin crew that the turbulence they were anticipating at 0208-0210 would probably be greater than the previous episode.
> they were using their radar, and made a slight deviation off the track before the pitots iced.
> nobody publicly knows what the CVR transcript may say about any conversation in the cockpit about the weather.
> that the weather in the ITCZ is dynamic, with conditions that can change rapidly.
As I noted earlier, there is agreement that they flew into a cloud with sufficient ice crystals to clog the pitots.
Satellite data has confirmed that areas of very small ice crystals in high concentrations exist within and in the vicinity of large scale convective weather systems. This is especially true in tropical latitudes where these systems are at their most extensive and can produce cloud tops as high as 50,000 feet because sea surface temperatures are at their highest and so more water is absorbed into the developing system. These ice crystals can remain long after the active convection which produced them has begun to decay. They are extremely small - probably only about 40 microns in diameter - and even at high concentrations, are unlikely to be evident visually even by day. With a radar reflectivity of only about 5% of that of average-sized raindrops, they will not appear on airborne weather radar displays either.
.....
The areas of abnormally high crystal concentration are believed to originate from columnar ascent in cumulonimbus cloud and can be expected to drift downwind from the main area of cloud tops. They are an entirely different phenomenon to the more ‘normal‘ occurrence of the ice crystals which give rise to high level Cirrus, Cirrostratus and Cirrocumulus cloud which are at much lower concentrations and do not represent a similar hazard.
SKYbrary - High Level Ice Crystal Icing