Malaysia on Sunday launched a terror probe into the mysterious disappearance of a plane with 239 people aboard after it emerged that two passengers boarded the flight with stolen passports, even as a massive multinational search mission continued for the second day without any success.
International Intelligence agencies joined the investigation into two passengers who boarded the missing Boeing 777 jetliner with stolen passports, as Malaysian authorities said radar images showed the plane may have turned back before vanishing.
More than a day and half after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing, no debris from the plane had been found, and the final minutes before it disappeared remained a mystery. The plane lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam after leaving Kuala lumpur early on Saturday for Beijing.
A massive international sea search has so far turned up no trace of the jet, though Vietnamese authorities said late on Sunday that a low-flying plane had spotted a rectangular object in waters about 90 kilometres south of Tho Chu island, in the same area where oil slicks were spotted on Saturday. Civil administration chief Pham Viet Dung said search teams from Vietnam and other countries were asked to send boats to the area to examine the object.
Malaysia’s air force chief, Rodzali Daud, said radar indicated that the plane may have turned back, but did not give further details on which direction it went or how far it veered off course.
“We are trying to make sense of this,” Daud said at a news conference. “The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back, and in some parts this was corroborated by civilian radar.”
Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots are supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does a U-turn. “From what we have, there was no such distress signal or distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled,” he said.
Italian-issued document bearing the name luigi Maraldi, the other Austrian under the name Christian Kozel. Police in Thailand said Maraldi’s passport was stolen on the island of Phuket last July.
A telephone operator on a China-based KlM hotline on Sunday confirmed that “Maraldi” and “Kozel” were both booked to leave Beijing on a KlM flight to Amsterdam on March 8. Maraldi was then to fly to Copenhagen, Denmark, on KlM on March 8, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany, on March 8.
“I can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV,” Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference on Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. “We have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board.”
“Our focus now is to find the aircraft,” he said, adding that finding the plane would make it easier for authorities to investigate any possible foul play.White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said the US was looking into the stolen passports, but that investigators had reached no conclusions.
In addition to the plane’s sudden disappearance, which experts say is consistent with a possible onboard explosion, the stolen passports have strengthened concerns about terrorism as a possible cause. Al-Qayyeda militants have used similar tactics to try and disguise their identities.
Still, other possible causes would seem just as likely at this stage, including a catastrophic failure of the plane’s engines, extreme turbulence, or pilot error or even suicide. Establishing what happened with any certainty will need data from flight recorders and a detailed examination of any debris, something that will take months if not years.
European authorities on Saturday confirmed the names and nationalities of the two stolen passports: One was an After more than 30 hours without contact with the aircraft, Malaysia Airlines told family members they should “prepare themselves for the worst,” Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director for the airline, told reporters.