– Political dimension? –
The Malaysian authorities have stressed that the backgrounds of all the passengers and crew are being checked – as well as engineers who may have worked on the plane before take-off.
Police have searched both pilots’ residences and are examining a flight simulator that Captain Zaharie had installed at his home. READ: Criminal probe under way in Malaysia plane drama.
Zaharie was a member of the party of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
A day before the flight, a Malaysian court overturned Anwar’s 2012 acquittal on charges he sodomised a male former aide and sentenced him to five years in jail.
Anwar calls the charges a sham cooked up by Malaysia’s long-ruling government to drive him from politics.
There is, however, no indication yet that Zaharie’s political affiliations have figured in the investigation.
First Officer Fariq’s record was queried after a South African woman said he had allowed her and a friend to ride in the cockpit of a 2011 flight, in violation of security rules imposed after the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
Hishammuddin noted that the two pilots “did not ask to fly together” on flight 370.
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