Police say Iranian on flight MH370 not a 'terrorist'

KUALA LUMPUR

By Chan Kok Leong

Malaysian police on Tuesday identified one of two travelers using stolen passports on missing flight MH370 as Iranian teenager Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad.

Police Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar said that the 19-year-old, using a stolen Austrian passport, had intended to migrate to Germany.

“We know this because when he failed to arrive in Frankfurt, his mother contacted us and we were able to verify his information,” Khalid told a press conference in Malaysia's capital on Tuesday.

“After checking his background with other police organizations, including the Iranian authorities, we think that he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group,” he added.

Khalid, however, said police have yet to rule out terrorism as a cause of the plane’s disappearance.

Interpol chief Ronald Noble later identified the second man as Delavar Syed Mohammed Reza. A picture showed Mahread, 19, and Reza, 29, boarding the Malaysia Airlines flight at the same time.

According to immigration officials, Pouria and Reza arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport from Phuket in Thailand on February 28 at around 8.30pm.

Both were given 90-day tourist visas.

“They arrived on the Austrian and Italian passports and cleared our immigration standard operating procedures and exited on March 7 evening using the same passports,” said Khalid.

Asked why the passports were not checked against the Interpol’s database, Khalid said the police normally acted on “prior intelligence.”

“The database is with the police. And although we work very closely with the immigration officers, there are 14,226,140 reports of stolen passports in the database," he said.

“We have to work by prior intelligence. Because we had no prior intelligence on terrorist activities the information on these two stolen passports were not give to the immigration,” Khalid told reporters.

He said that the police were focusing on four specific areas to explain the plane’s disappearance: hijacking, sabotage, and psychological problems or personal problems with the crew and passengers.

“We are currently looking into each passenger’s backgrounds and we have received information including all the photographs of the China nationals from the Public Security of China,” said Khalid.

Earlier in the day, the BBC reported that the two passengers traveling with stolen Italian and Austrian passports were Iranians.

The report quoted an Iranian friend of one of the passengers as saying that he had hosted the pair in Kuala Lumpur after they had arrived from Tehran days before their flight to Beijing.

The friend said the men had bought the fake passports as they wanted to migrate to Europe, said the report.

The passports were identified as belonging to Austrian Christian Kozel, 30, and Italian Luigi Maraldi, 37. Maraldi held a press conference in Phuket on March 9 to say he had lost his passport in Thailand last year.

The Financial Times reported March 10 that the two one-way tickets bound for Beijing on MH370 were sold to an Iranian named “Mr Ali” by a Thai travel agent in Pattaya on March 6. The bookings were then relayed to the China Southern Airlines office in Bangkok.

Meanwhile, Malaysian Airlines announced Tuesday that they had expanded their search for the missing aircraft to West Malaysia and the Straits of Malacca after military radar readings suggested that the plane had “turned back”.

The Malaysian Airlines (MAS) Boeing 777-200 went missing after losing contact with the Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control some two hours after leaving Kuala Lumpur on March 8.

The Beijing-bound flight, which had 227 passengers and 12 flight crew on board, left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41 am before losing contact at around 1.30am.

Among those on board were 153 Chinese nationals, 38 Malaysians and passengers from 12 other countries. Up until now, there have been no signs of the plane, which has prompted an international Search-and-Rescue operation involving ten countries.

englishnews@aa.com.tr