Former Malaysia prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has accused the CIA and Boeing of ‘hiding’ information about the flight MH370, missing for more than two months now.
In a post on his personal blog on Sunday, which has been widely reported by global media, he suggested the CIA remotely seized control of the Boeing 777 jet in midair.
He says the Malaysian Airlines plane’s disappearance on March 8 was “most likely not an ordinary crash after fuel was exhausted”, according to reports.He also says the Australian-led search for the plane off the Indian Ocean is “a waste of time and money (to look for debris or oil slick or to listen for ‘pings’ from the black box)”.
“This is most likely not an ordinary crash after fuel was exhausted. The plane is somewhere, maybe without MAS (Malaysia Airlines) markings,” Sydney Morning Herald quoted Mahathir as saying.
Dr Mahathir, 88, who was prime minister for 22 years from 1981, wrote on the blog he could not imagine that the “the pilots made a soft landing in rough seas and then quietly went down with the aircraft”.
The plane could have been switched onto autopilot remotely by the CIA, if the plane had been hijacked, he stated.
“The ‘uninterruptible’ autopilot would be activated – either by pilot, by on board sensors, or even remotely by radio or satellite links by government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, if terrorists attempt to gain control of the flight deck”, the ex-PM wrote on his blog, citing sources.
“Clearly Boeing and certain agencies have the capacity to take over ‘uninterruptible control’ of commercial airliners of which MH370 B777 is one. Can it not be that the pilot of MH370 lost control of their aircraft after someone directly or remotely activated the equipment for seizure of control of the aircraft?
“Someone is hiding something,” Mahathir, who is known for his anti-West stand, was quoted as saying by Fairfax Media.
“It is not fair that MAS and Malaysia should take the blame. …They can land safely or they may crash, but airplanes do not just disappear. Certainly not these days with all the powerful communication systems which operate almost indefinitely and possess huge storage capacities.”
Mahathir, who still heavily influences the ruling party, also questioned Boeing about the satellite tracking data on the plane.
“MH370 is a Boeing 777 aircraft. It was built and equipped by Boeing, hence all the communications and GPS equipment must have been installed by Boeing.
“If they failed or have been disabled, Boeing must know how it can be done and surely Boeing would ensure that they cannot be easily disabled as they are vital to the safety and operation of the plane,” he wrote.
“For some reason, the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA,” he noted, asking, “Can it not be that the pilots of MH370 lost control of their aircraft after someone directly or remotely activated the equipment for seizure of control of the aircraft?”
It is believed that the plane veered far off course while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Meanwhile, Anglo-American journalist and author Nigel Cawthorne has floated a new theory in his book to explain the mystery.
He says the plane had been hit during a joint Thai-US military exercise.
He bases his theory on what he has claimed to be an eyewitness account. Mike Mckay, an oil worker said he had seen a plane being fired at by the military after it strayed from its route.
At that time defence exercises were on in the South China Sea. Besides the Thai-US joint exercise, China, Japan, Indonesia and a few other countries were engaged in their separate manoeuvres.
Cawthorne believes the plane that Mckay had seen being shot down was in fact MH370.
He has said firing practice was on in the military exercise that involved ground, sea, and air combatants.
John Chuckman, a former oil company executive-turned-author, earlier suggested that America could have shot down MH370, and was now possibly trying to cover it up.
The latest claims by Mahathir come less than a month after the Malaysia-based international team, searching for the possible debris of the missing flight, conceded that the plane might not really have crashed, after a tedious search in the southern Indian Ocean yielded no results whatsoever.
MH370 mysteriously vanished from the civilian radar while flying between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing with 239 people onboard.
It is a story that has bewildered experts and public and prompted widespread theories explaining the uncanny happening, with many even saying that the plane could have been abducted by aliens. – Agencies
