11th Mar 2014 12:37
Kuala Lumpur (Alliance News) - The passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane travelling on stolen passports were Iranian migrants and "probably not terrorists," Interpol said Tuesday.
Pouri Nourmohammadi, 18, and Delavar Seyedmohammadreza, 29, were travelling on Austrian and Italian passports, respectively, that had earlier been declared stolen in Thailand, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble told reporters in Lyon, France.
"These two individuals were probably not terrorists" but "might just be people being smuggled or trafficked," Noble said.
The men first used their Iranian passports to travel from Doha to Kuala Lumpur, where they did not need visas, and then boarded the Beijing-bound Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 using the stolen ones, he said.
No sign was found by late Tuesday of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared from radar over the South China Sea early Saturday, about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
Swedish police received a missing person report for an Iranian believed to have boarded the plane on the Italian passport, Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet reported. A man contacted by the paper said he was a distant relative of the missing man, an Iranian planning to seek asylum in Sweden.
Malaysian police said earlier that the younger Iranian was hoping to migrate to Germany using the Austrian passport, and did not appear to be a member of any terrorist organisation.
"His mother was expecting him to arrive in Frankfurt," police Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar said.
Malaysian authorities expanded the search area for the missing jet to include mountains and hills of the northern state of Kelantan, a Malaysian aviation official said, but found "nothing to report."
Khalid said police were considering hijack, sabotage, psychological problems of passengers and crew, or their personal problems, as the four areas that could have led to the plane's disappearance.
"We have no intelligence of any involvement of terrorists," he said.
Nearly 100 ships and aircraft from 10 countries were involved in the massive search operation in the South China Sea, as disputes over conflicting territorial claims in the area were set aside in the search for signs of the plane.
Vietnam expanded by 26,000 square kilometres the area it is searching for the missing Boeing 777-200 and the 239 people on board.
Pham Quy Tieu, deputy chairman of Vietnam's National Search and Rescue Committee, said their search planes and ships have covered 150,000 square kilometres so far but with no success.
Vietnam has used a satellite to survey the seas around Tho Chu Island, one of the possible crash areas.
China's Defence Ministry has also began using 10 satellites to sweep the South China Sea for wreckage.
Beijing has sent a team of experts to Kuala Lumpur to help search for the missing plane, which was carrying 154 Chinese passengers.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force P3 Orion aircraft was due to arrive late Tuesday at Butterworth Air Base in Penang, Prime Minister John Key said, and would likely be searching waters north of Malaysia.
The tickets used by the passengers with the stolen passports were both bought from a tour agency in the Thai beach resort of Pattaya over the phone by a man in Iran called Ali, Pattaya Police Chief Colonel Suphachai Phuikaewkham said Tuesday.
They were paid for by another Iranian national who runs a picture-framing business in the resort.
"We've questioned him but didn't find anything suspicious about him," Suphachai said.
Interpol said it found no more suspicious passenger identities on the flight, Chinese state media quoted Beijing's Ministry of Public Security as saying.
Copyright dpa