Mystery Disaster
"When you think about the number of passports that have been stolen or gone missing around the world, it could be related, but it is probably not.""Any flight of that size in Asia would be carrying a couple of people with false passports."
Clive Williams, counter-terrorism expert, Macquarie University, Australia
"What are the chances that one person boards a Malaysia Airlines plane on a stolen Caucasian passport? Maybe it is one in a thousand. Two? One in a million."
unnamed aviation expert
"We just need to make sure that if we see a passport, it doesn't look like it has been forged and it has a legitimate visa. If it all looks legitimate and everything else about the customer is legitimate we will load them on the plane."
Hugh Dunleavy, executive vice-president, Malaysia Airlines
EDGAR SU/REUTERS Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman
said at a news conference at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in
Sepang Monday that search and rescue teams failed to find any sign of
the missing aircraft.
The airlines denies it is responsible to validate passports. Four false passport-holders were identified as having boarded a regular flight from Malaysia to Beijing. Two of them appear suspicious, although Interpol is investigating all four. Four passengers failed to board Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 as scheduled, and the airlines removed their luggage from the baggage compartment; that too is standard procedure since 9-11.The FBI, Interpol and China's ministry of public security are all deeply involved, along with no fewer than 8 other countries' security intelligence, in attempting to discover what lay behind the sudden disappearance of an ordinary routine flight carrying a total of 239 passengers, including crew. An extensive search and rescue operation continues, although it is a search for debris, and should any rescue take place it might be a piece of the aircraft that would render clues regarding its fate.
One Malaysian official, perhaps speaking without authorization, spoke his view that without any kind of evidence available to lead investigators to even a remote conclusions it "appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet". Certainly no message from the cockpit that anything was mechanically awry, no concerns expressed, no indication that the plane was off course, that a flight correction was in order; nothing.
The trade in stolen passports in South-east Asia is notorious. Interpol has some 39-million stolen or lost passports in their recorded database. Two separate ticketing agents at the airline confirmed through their records that the holders of two of the stolen passports were booked to fly from Beijing to Amsterdam. The credibility of thoughts turning to a deliberate suicide bombing is being downplayed.
But not in all quarters.There is the elusive thought that Al-Qaeda recently expressed its view that jihadists should be trying to help their less-organized brethren in Islamist jihad abroad, like the Chinese Uyghurs. A plot to target China over its perceived oppression of Uyghurs is conceivable. There is also the trace suggestion of a mysterious Mr. Ali, said to be an Iranian behind the purchase of several airlines tickets.
Conspiracy theorists aside, these are possibilities, however remote.
Labels: Catastrophe, Malaysia
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home