The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Murder-suicide claim over mystery of Malaysia flight
Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has claimed the “top levels” of the Malaysian government long suspected the vanishing of a plane almost six years ago was a mass murder-suicide by the pilot.
Mr Abbott was prime minister when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying 239 people, disappeared in March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Australia, working on Malaysia’s behalf, co-ordinated what became the largest search in aviation history, but it failed to find the plane before being ended in 2017.
In a new Sky News documentary, Mr Abbott said high-ranking Malaysian officials believed veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah deliberately downed the jet.
“My very clear understanding, from the very top levels of the Malaysian government, is that from very, very early on, they thought it was murder-suicide by the pilot,” said Mr Abbott, who was PM from 2013 to 2015.
“I’m not going to say who said what to whom, but let me reiterate – I want to be absolutely crystal clear – it was understood at the highest levels that this was almost certainly murdersuicide by the pilot.”
A Malaysian-led independent investigation released in 2018 said the plane’s course was changed manually, but did not name a suspect and raised the possibility of “intervention by a third party”.
Investigators said the cause of the disappearance could not be determined until the wreckage and the plane’s black boxes were found.
Malaysia has had a change of government since the plane’s disappearance, after prime minister Mahathir Mohamad ousted the government led by Najib Razak, whose party had ruled Malaysia since its independence in 1957.
The pilot’s family has long denied he was suicidal. The 2018 investigative report said there was no evidence of abnormal behaviour or stress in the two pilots and no passengers had pilot training.
Mr Abbott believes a new investigation is now warranted.