Mystery still hangs over this flight. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says “very senior” Malaysian officials suspected at the outset the pilot of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 (flight MH370) of deliberately causing the disaster nearly six years ago years.
On March 8, 2014, this plane, which left Kuala Lumpur in the direction of Beijing with 239 passengers on board, mysteriously disappeared. No trace of the device has ever been found in the 120,000 km2 search area explored in the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia.
“I won’t tell you who said what”
This maritime research, the most important in history, had been interrupted in January 2017. The causes of this disappearance – the greatest mystery of modern civil aviation – have been the subject of numerous speculations from the start.
In a documentary aired on Sky News on Wednesday, Abbott said he understood within a week of the disappearance that Malaysia suspected the captain of deliberately crashing the plane. “I clearly understood that very high officials of the Malaysian government had thought from a very, very early age, that it was a suicidal gesture by the pilot,” he said. “I won’t tell you who said what,” he added.
“This speculation will hurt loved ones”
The family and relatives of the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, have always rejected this hypothesis. The former director-general of Malaysian civil aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, criticized Wednesday the words of the former Australian Prime Minister, saying that there is not enough evidence to support this idea.
“It is only a theory,” Azharuddin, who was head of civil aviation at the time of the disappearance of flight MH370, told AFP. “This speculation will hurt relatives (of the victims). The pilot’s family will also feel very bad because you are laying a charge without any evidence, ”he added.
Many relatives of victims devastated by the disappearance have accused the Malaysian airline and government in the past of hiding information about the tragedy, which the parties have disputed.
