Controversial attempts to suggest a mysterious third party was responsible for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been further undermined by new revelations about Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah’s eccentric online behavior.
Malaysia’s recent major report on the Boeing 777’s mysterious disappearance in 2014 confirmed that the aircraft was flown manually as it performed a series of turns across the Malaysian Peninsula.
SEE our video “Dispelling the myths about flying”.
This is something pilots and other experts have been saying consistently and many see Zaharie as the most likely candidate.
But the Malaysians fired up a controversy by suggesting a third party could have unlawfully interfered with the plane after take-off to shut down communications and make the turns without saying whom that may have been.
READ Sensational revelations point finger at MH370 captain.
Chief investigator Kok Soo Chon took that further during a press conference.
“We have examined the pilot, the first officer. We were quite satisfied with the background, with the training, with the mental health, mental state,’’ he said. “We are not of the opinion that it could have been an event committed by the pilot.”
Kok said investigators could not deny the turns were manual or that systems were turned off “with intent or otherwise”.
“So we feel that there’s also one possibility that could account for all this,’’ he said. “We are not ruling out any possibility, we are just saying that no matter what we do we cannot exclude the possibility of a third person or third party or unlawful interference.’’
To be fair, and as Kok pointed out, investigating MH370 was one of the world’s toughest jobs because of the lack of information about the flight. He also noted that the International Civil Aviation Organisation Annex 13 investigation was charged with looking at safety rather than criminality.
MH370 CREW MENTAL STATE
Nonetheless, the mental state of the crew is one of the human factors involved in that process and it is disturbing there was no mention in the report of Zaharie’s politically-charged Facebook posts, a relationship with another woman or his obsession with the two models.
The Australian newspaper’s South-East Asian correspondent, Amanda Hodge, uncovered Zaharie’s relationship with a married woman and her three children in 2016.
The two messaged each other about a personal matter two days before the flight but the woman would not talk about it.
Fatima Pardi told The Australian Zaharie had not seemed stressed and that she had been interviewed four times by Malaysian investigators about the relationship and MH370.
Stories about Zaharie’s strongly opinionated political Facebook posts, his support for the Malaysia People’s Justice Party (PKR) and his distant relationship to PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim surfaced as early as 2014.
There was an ongoing suggestion, denied by his family and not dealt with in the report, that Zaharie hijacked the plane for political reasons.
And now there are new revelations by veteran journalist Paul Toohey about Zaharie’s pursuit on Facebook of Malaysian twin-sister models 34 years younger than him in the year before the tragic disappearance of the Boeing 777.
This included 97 separate Facebook comments on the page of the Penang-based model Qi Min Lan, also known as Jasmine Lan.
One psychologist, Paul Dickens, told Toohey the posts about politics and the girl showed “a degree of obsessional behavior mixed with recklessness”.
All of this is a marked contrast with Malaysia’s report suggesting nothing untoward had been uncovered about Zaharie’s mental state or family life.
One basis for this was an examination of CCTV footage at a series of airports in the weeks leading up to the flight.
These included flights to Beijing, Denpasar and Melbourne which showed “ no significant behavioral changes” .
“On all the CCTV recordings the appearance was similar, i.e. well-groomed and attired. The gait, posture, facial expressions and mannerism were his normal characteristics,” the report said.
Investigators also looked at medical records — finding one for Zaharie from a private center that was not recorded by Malaysia Airlines — and searched credit card accounts for patterns of buying over-the-counter medication at local or overseas pharmacies without finding any.
They interviewed families and work associates and combed through financial records looking for signs of unusual activity or debts. Family and friends have continued to maintain Zaharie was not responsible for MH370’s disappearance.
The report said Zaharie’s ability to handle stress at work and home “was reported to be good”.
“There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability,’’ it said. “There were no significant changes in his lifestyle, interpersonal conflict or family stresses.”
Overall, the report concluded, “there is no evidence to suggest that the PIC and FO experienced recent changes or difficulties in personal relationships or that there were any conflicts or problems between them.
“ All the flight and cabin crew were certified fit to fly and were within duty-time limits at the time of the flight and were adequately rested.
“There had been no financial stress or impending insolvency, recent or additional insurance coverage purchased or recent behavioral changes for the crew.
“The radio-telephony communications conducted by the PIC and the FO with the Air Traffic Controllers conformed to the routine procedure and no evidence of anxiety or stress was detected in the communications.”
QUESTIONS ABOUT COMMITMENT
The discrepancies between media reports of Zaharie’s life and the report’s conclusions raise questions about how open and committed the Malaysians have been.
They were quick to draw a line under the Annex 13 investigation after the unsuccessful conclusion of the most recent search.
Members of the Independent Group of experts have been critical of what they say are deficiencies in the report, including the failure by Malaysia to collect all available pieces of potential debris and the move to shift blame onto the mysterious third party without evidence.
As IG member Victor Iannello said shortly after the report’s release: “How can Malaysian investigators ignore that the captain had the best opportunity and capability to divert the plane?”
READ: MH370, what has been left out of the flawed investigation.
There are several examples where an investigation has been reluctant to conclude a pilot deliberately crashed a plane, including a 1997 crash of a SilkAir Boeing 737-300 in Sumatra that killed 104 people.
In that case, the crash was independently investigated by the US national transportation safety Board and the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee.
The Indonesian NTSC was unable to determine a cause of the crash while the NTSB found it was the result of deliberate control inputs, most likely by the captain.
Leaked documents later confirmed Indonesian authorities would not issue a public verdict because they feared it would make people too frightened to fly.
The MH370 investigation apparently did look at online allegations but AirlineRatings could find no mention of them in the main body of the report. A Royal Malaysia Police report noted that Zaharie commented on Jasmine Lan’s photos and he was involved in “political related activities”.
Despite the political involvement, the police said there was “no indication and information that could be considered as potential threat in investigation”.
Responding to questions during the press conference, Kok said the team looked at all the reports and gossip on social media and came up with 60 allegations.
He said these were removed one by one to see what remained behind.
“Only seven remained behind,’’ he said, without revealing what these were. AirlinesRatings has subsequently seen a report by the Royal Malaysia Police alluding to the Jasmine Lan Facebook posts but not the comments uncovered by Toohey.
Kok said two psychiatrists who were part of the investigation team had examined the audio recording during the M370 flight as well as CCTV footage of the crew prior to the flight without detecting anything abnormal.
Backing away slightly from his original position, Kok said the report was not saying the pilots did not do it – conceding “Ok, it could be possible” — but he again reiterated the belief this was unlikely.
He contended the fact the turn-back was manual, there were no records of aircraft defects and the plane’s transponder and ACARS digital data link were switched off “irresistibly” pointed to the words “unlawful interference”.
“But having said that, since we are talking about this, if there was unlawful interference, why were there not claims?’’ he said “Why were there not threats, why were there not people coming up to claim responsibility? We don’t find those things, so how could you say it’s unlawful interference?”
Kok also conceded all passengers from the 15 countries represented on the flight had all been checked out by local authorities.
“And they have come up with clean bill of health for everybody,’’ he said. “None of them had ever received any flight training. They are not able to pilot a plane.”
Ultimately, Kok handballed the question of unlawful interference to the police.
CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
With plane wreckage still not found and with no guarantee that even that will help answer the question of who was responsible, an ongoing criminal investigation is a major remaining avenue of inquiry.
Yet the move by the Annex 13 investigation to set the scene for exonerating Zaharie raises questions about the will of the Malaysians to pursue this further rather than sweep the whole untidy mess under the carpet.
Justice, as the old adage reminds us, should not just be done but should be seen to be done.
Authorities in France have an ongoing criminal investigation underway, as they do for all air crashes, because of the presence on MH370 of four French citizens.
Could one possibility be to use the French inquiry as the basis of a multinational joint investigation team similar to the one working on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17?
It’s a question worth asking.
