(Reuters) — Malaysia is focusing its criminal investigation on the cabin crew and pilots of a missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the country’s police chief said on Wednesday (April 2).
Inspector General of Police, Royal Malaysian Police Force, Khalid Abu Bakar said the passengers have been cleared of possible involvement in activity that could have been connected to the flight’s disappearance on March 8.
“As we have said earlier, only the passengers has been cleared. The rest? No,” he said at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian authorities have still not ruled out mechanical problems as causing the disappearance, but say evidence suggests the plane was deliberately diverted from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Investigators believe that someone with detailed knowledge of both the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial aviation navigation switched off the plane’s communications systems before diverting it thousands of miles off its scheduled course. That has turned the focus of investigations onto the two pilots, 53-year-old captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his co-pilot, 27-year old Fariq Abdul Hamid.
The police chief said that is part of the criminal investigation under the “Security Offenses (Special Measures) Act” (SOSMA).
“The investigation has been classified under Section 130c of the Penal Code, in which SOSMA procedures apply. So that is the status still. It is an criminal investigation. That is why I am not able to share with you, see?,” he said.
Police previous have said their investigation into the men has failed to turn up any red flags. The FBI helped Malaysian authorities analyse data from Zaharie’s personal flight simulator but found nothing suspicious.
Search teams in the southern Indian Ocean are in a race against time to locate the plane’s black box recorder, which has an expected battery life of around 30 days and may well contain the key to understanding the plane’s mysterious disappearance.
