Police have identified one of the two suspects who used stolen passports to get on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH307, officials said Monday. Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, Inspector General of Police of Malaysia said that the man has been identified from Kuala Lumpur International Airport CCTV footage. "I can confirm that he is not a Malaysian, but cannot divulge which country he is from yet," he said, reports The Star Online.
Bakar said the investigation team was checking immigration records to find out when the two suspects entered the country.
"The man is not from Xinjiang, China. We do not have verification of a Chinese militant group claiming responsibility for the missing plane," he added.
Amid fears of a possible terrorist attack, the inspector general said the team is yet to find any indications of it being a terrorist act. "Let us investigate the matter thoroughly," he said and requested that the public stops speculating on the matter.
The passports of Luigi Maraldi of Italy and Christian Kozel of Austria were reportedly stolen on the Thai resort island of Phuket some two years ago. Police brought the real Maraldi to a press conference in Phuket. He was on holiday in Phuket and said that his passport was stolen August 1 last year while on a previous holiday to Thailand, reports The Malaysian Insider.
He found the passport missing after he deposited it to rent a vehicle at a business in Patong. According to The Malaysian Insider, Patong is the red light tourist area in Phuket where a number of passports are lost or stolen every year.
Malaysian Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the two suspected passengers were of Asian ethnicity. "I am still perturbed. Can't these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces?" he said, reports The Strait Times.
The two men booked the flight together through an agency in Pattaya. The flight was booked to Beijing. The man using Maraldi's name was due to head to Copenhagen and the other to Frankfurt, Germany, reports The Malaysian Insider.
The ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 carrying 239 passengers and crew members went off radar, Saturday. It is believed that the flight crashed off Vietnam's southern Tho Chu Island. But Malaysia's transport minister Hishamuddin Hussein said there were no signs of a plane wreckage.
Several aircrafts and ships have been deployed to search the plane. The rescue teams includes members from Vietnam, China, Singapore, Indonesia, the United States, Thailand, Australia and the Philippines, the Malaysian Civil Aviation Chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said at a Monday press conference, reports the abc NEWS.
