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| Suspicion: 2 passengers on missing Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight had stolen passports |
| 2014-03-09 |
| [Telegraph] Terror fear over stolen passports used on missing plane MH370 Air safety experts investigate whether terrorism was behind the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight which vanished over the South China Sea Air safety experts are investigating whether an airliner that mysteriously vanished in the Far East could have been the target of a terrorist attack. Twenty-four hours after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea, the only clue to the fate of its 239 passengers and crew was the revelation that at least two people on board were using stolen passports. The disclosure raised fears that terrorists could have used the passport to board the craft, which vanished with no prior signals of trouble to air traffic controllers. Officials stressed that it was too early to say whether terrorism was a likely cause of the Malaysia airlines crash. But US officials said they were checking into passenger manifests and going back through intelligence. "We are aware of the reporting on the two stolen passports," one senior official told NBC news. "We have not determined a nexus to terrorism yet, although it's still very early, and that's by no means definitive." A leading aviation safety expert also said that it was "extraordinary" that the pilots of the jetliner did not have time to make a distress call. David Learmount, of the specialist aviation magazine Flight Global, said that as the plane was cruising at about 35,000 feet when it lost contact over the South China sea, the pilots would normally have had "plenty of time" to radio in any technical problems before the plane hit the water. Chris Yates, another aviation expert, said: "There will be two areas for the investigation: the maintenance of the aircraft and also possible terrorism." Malaysia Airlines released the passenger list for Flight MH370, a red-eye between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. After checking the names of passengers 63 and 101, Christian Kozel and Luigi Maraldi, the Austrian and Italian governments said that neither man was on board. Both had their passports stolen in Thailand over the last two years, and Mr Maraldi had been issued a new one according to the Italian media. An unnamed senior American intelligence official told the New York Times that "at this time, we have not identified this as an act of terrorism. While the stolen passports are interesting, they don't necessarily say to us that this was a terrorism act". |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |