Thanks, PJ, it's what I thot, but some newbies may not realize the fine points. Blindly following the FD's is not always recommended when the steam gauges are telling you that something is awry.
For OK, the jet was not in a "deep stall", but rather "deeply stalled". A nose down stick and maybe even power could have recovered the thing, given 35,000 friggin' feet to do so.
It comes down to realizing what the jet is doing and what you can do about it with the tools you are given.
The complicated reversion laws and pilots thinking they have this and that "protections" is not healthy, IMHO. Ya gotta have a baseline that you can count on without a manual switch to "direct" law, which I do not recommend unless you are Chuck Yeager. And then we have the THS that follows the pilot back stick to achieve the commanded gee, NOT THE AOA!!! So to recover, the pilot had to roll the THS trim down and also push forward on the stick in order to provide the nose down moment required. I was surprised that BEA discussed the longitudinal static stability. Considering that the jet control laws disregard AoA other than warnings and some limits in "normal law", would seem to me that we could look at that aspect a bit more.