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Malaysian officials are poring over CCTV footage and questioning immigration officers and guards at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport, concerned that a security breach may be connected to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
At least two passengers on the Beijing-bound jet have been found to be using stolen passports, and Malaysia’s transport minister, Hishamuddin Hussein, confirmed yesterday that investigators were looking at four passengers in total.
The US sent the FBI to investigate after the plane en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished from radar early on Saturday somewhere at sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, but stressed there was no evidence of terrorism yet.
The four passengers investigated by authorities comprise two travellers with European passports, possibly Ukrainian, in addition to two travelling on stolen Austrian and Italian passports, two Malaysian officials with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters news agency.
“We have deployed our investigators to look through all the security camera footage. Also, they are interviewing immigration officials who let the impostors through,” said one official with direct knowledge of the investigation. “Early indications show some sort of a security lapse, but I cannot say any further right now.”
The head of Malaysia’s civil aviation authority said yesterday that two “impostors” had been identified by investigators as they made their way from check-in, through immigration to the departure gate.
Interpol said in a statement that the international police body was investigating all passports used to board flight MH 370 and was working to determine the “true identities’’ of the passengers who used the stolen passports.
Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority said yesterday that a military plane had spotted at sea an object suspected to be part of the missing airliner. The authority said it was too dark to be certain the object was part of the plane, and that more aircraft would be dispatched to investigate the site, in waters off southern Vietnam, in the morning.
Malaysia earlier in the day said the plane may have inexplicably turned back.
“There is a distinct possibility the airplane did a turn-back, deviating from the course,” said Malaysia’s air force chief, General Rodzali Daud, citing radar data.
But Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the Boeing 777’s systems would have set off alarm bells.
“When there is an air turn-back the pilot would be unable to proceed as planned,” he said, adding that authorities were “quite puzzled” over the situation.
Malaysian authorities have expanded their search for wreckage to the country’s west coast after initially concentrating to the east in the South China Sea.
A total of 40 ships and 22 aircraft from an array of countries including Malaysia’s neighbours, China and the US are now involved in the hunt across the two areas, officials said, with two Australian surveillance aircraft also due to join the search.
Meanwhile, officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner with 239 people on board are narrowing the focus of their inquiries on the possibility that it disintegrated mid-flight, a senior source said yesterday.
“The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet,” said the source, who is involved in the preliminary investigations.
If the plane had plunged intact from such a height, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly on the investigation.
The source was speaking shortly before Vietnamese authorities said a military plane had spotted an object at sea suspected to be part of the missing airliner.
Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical issues. Malaysian authorities have said they are focused on finding the plane and have declined to comment when asked about the investigations.
However, the source said the closest parallels were the explosion on board an Air India jetliner in 1985 when it was over the Atlantic Ocean and the Lockerbie air disaster in 1988. Both planes were cruising at around 31,000 feet when bombs exploded on board.
Canadian and Indian police have long alleged the Air India bombing was conducted by Sikh extremists living in western Canada as revenge on India for the deadly 1984 assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism’s holiest shrine.
The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie killed 259 passengers and crew and another 11 people on the ground. A Libyan intelligence officer was convicted for the attack. International police agency Interpol has said at least two of the passengers on board the Malaysian plane, and possibly more, used passports listed as missing or stolen on its database.
“While it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol’s databases,” Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said.
US and European security officials have however maintained there is no proof yet of foul play and there could be other explanations for the use of stolen passports. — AP
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