#MH370 "terror or suicide", the world tries to solve puzzle

 
1. As the world scrambles to solve the frustrating puzzle of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, every possible motive is being looked at including terrorism, hijack and suicide.
2. More chilling, though, is a claim by an American expert that the plane’s disappearance could be part of a suicide plot by a crew member. A top terrorism expert claimed that there was a growing consensus that this was a suicide by the pilot or co-pilot.
3. They wanted to get as far away and land in the farthest and deepest part of the ocean, said Rep Pete King (R-LI), chair of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intel­ligence.
4. The scheme might have hinged on the hope that family members could still collect life insurance on the dead pilot or co-pilot. If they never find the plane, they can’t call it suicide. Malaysian government did not discount the possibility when asked about it.
5. It is also learnt that police are delving into the behaviour patterns of the crew members in the days prior to the flight. It is believed MH370 headed south towards the Indian Ocean after its “turnback” as some of the deepest spots of any ocean were to be found there. Experts expressed doubt that the pilot and co-pilot were both in on the plan, one or the other would have to somehow silence the other.
6. The plane’s sharp climb to 45,000 feet, as recorded by Malaysian military radar, would probably have “incapacitated” everyone outside the cockpit by rapidly reducing oxygen levels in the cabin.
7. Meanwhile, police are investigating the identity of a Malaysian pilot supposedly connected to a convicted “British shoe bomber” and if he was connected to the missing MH370 aircraft.
8. Authorities are reportedly investigating a possible terror plot in the case of the missing MH370 after an al-Qaeda informant told a court how a group of Malaysian men planned to hijack a passenger jet.
9. A British-born Muslim, Saajid Badat, who also happens to be the son-in-law of Osama Laden, told a New York court that four or five Malaysian men had planned to use a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow open the cockpit door of a passenger plane and hijack the flight.
10. Badat, who security experts have labelled as "credible", told the court that he had met the jihadists - including a pilot - in Afghanistan and had supplied them with a shoe bomb.
11. “I gave one of my shoes to the Malaysians. I think it was to access the cockpit.” The revelations come just a day after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak admitted that the Boeing 777's communications system had been switched off deliberately "by someone on the plane.
12. “These spectaculars take a long time in the planning,” said a British security source. Confirmation that a missing Malaysian airliner was deliberately diverted suggests several scenarios that have sharpened scrutiny of the passengers and cockpit crew, with police reportedly searching the pilot's home.
13. Najib announced that satellite and radar data clearly indicated the plane's automated communications had been disabled and the plane then turned away from its intended path and flown on for hours.
14. “These movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane," he said, adding that investigators had consequently "refocused their investigation into crew and passengers on board."
15. Since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the International Civil Airline Organisation has mandated high security standards for plane cockpits. Cockpit doors -- reinforced to withstand bullets -- must be locked from the inside before push off from the gate.
16. "So for me there's only a few scenarios," said Paul Yap, an aviation lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore. "First the people involved in the deliberate actions are the pilots, one of them or both of them in cahoots. Then we have a scenario where terrorists make the pilots change course and switch off the transponders under duress, maybe threatening to kill passengers," Yap said.
17. The transponder of MH370 was switched off around the time analysts said it would have reached its cruising altitude, when pilots often emerge to take a bathroom or coffee break.
18. The hijackers of the four planes used in the 9/11 attacks turned off the transponders of three of the jets. It was not clear if police have yet searched the homes of the other crew on Flight MH370, including that of First Officer Fariq, 27. His record and personal life have already come under scrutiny.
19. An Australian television report broadcast an interview with a young South African woman who said Fariq and another pilot colleague invited them into the cockpit of a flight he co-piloted from Phuket, Thailand to Kuala Lumpur in 2011.
20. Since 9/11, passengers have been prohibited from entering cockpits during a flight. Malaysia Airlines has said it was "shocked" by the report, but that it could not verify the claims.
21. The son of a high-ranking official in the public works department of a Malaysian state, Fariq joined Malaysia Airlines when he was 20. He is a mild-mannered "good boy" who regularly visited his neighbourhood mosque outside Kuala Lumpur, said the mosque's imam, or spiritual leader.
22. If hijackers are suspected, then the glare of suspicion will fall again on two passengers who boarded with stolen EU passports. Interpol had identified the two men as Iranians: Seyed Mohammed Reza Delavar, who used a stolen Italian passport, and Pouria Nourmohammadi, who used an Austrian one. Both passports had been stolen in Thailand.
23. THEORY: Pilot suicide WHY: While rare, there have been cases of pilots crashing planes to take their own lives. In December 1997, a SilkAir Boeing 737 from Jakarta to Singapore plunged into a river in Indonesia with the loss of 104 passengers and crew. US investigators blamed pilot suicide.
24. EXPERT VIEW: A suicide bid "is possible and if that's the case there might not be a lot of debris because the plane would have come down in relative structural integrity", said Terence Fan, aviation expert at Singapore Management University.
25. "The airplane is not meant to float and if the airplane sinks in the water, water will go inside because the door seals are not meant to seal water." Nothing has emerged to suggest any serious psychological problems with either of the pilots who were flying MH370.
26. Is hijacking a possibility?  Interpol's information suggested the pair were "probably not terrorists", Noble said at the time. Adam Dolnik, a professor of terrorism studies at the University of Wollongong in Australia, said he still doubted that organised terrorism was behind the Malaysian plane mystery.
27. While a group like Al-Qaeda "would love to bring down an airliner", a Malaysia Airlines plane made little sense as a target and the stolen passports had an "amateurish" element, Dolnik said.
28. "Terrorists don't do (hijackings), because the chances of success have gone down," he said, citing the challenge of bringing weapons onto a plane and subduing other passengers. There has been no indication yet of any possible terrorist involvement. But some academics suggest the theory requires further consideration.
29. "Investigations should focus on criminal and terrorist motives," said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "It is likely that the aircraft was hijacked by a team knowledgeable about airport and aircraft security. It is likely they are supported by a competent team from the ground." Malaysia has not been the target of any notable terror attacks. But terror analysts say it is home to several individuals alleged to be operatives of militant Islamic groups such as the Al-Qaeda linked Jemaah Islamiyah.
30. Most of the passengers on the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight were Chinese nationals. China is grappling with simmering anger among its Muslim ethnic Uighur minority in the country's remote far west, many of whom openly complain of Chinese repression.
31. It has blamed Uighur separatists for a string of violent incidents including a coordinated knife attack in the south western city of Kunming on March 1 that left 29 people dead. Malaysia has deported at least 17 Uighur Muslims who were travelling on fake passports back to China since 2011.
32. As of now, the missing MH370 remains mistery. -- Bloggers Note