Stolen Passport Passengers booked through Iranian agent - UPDATED

UPDATED

We better find the black box. Explosive residue (if that’s what it was) is probably becoming undetectable on the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps the shape of recovered parts might tell us.

If this plane exploded at 35,000 feet, traveling at 600 mph, what size matter could be left? And shredded as it must have been, the debris is thus spread so far, how can we detect it on the bottom of the ocean.

The only mediating hope is that the Gulf of Thailand, if that is where the remains of the aircraft are, is relatively shallow. Mean depth about 140 feet, max depth about 700.

FT:

Malaysian authorities have given US investigators biometric details on two passengers who used stolen passports to travel on a Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared on Saturday.

It is hoped the move could accelerate identification of the two men who are now at the centre of the international mystery over what happened to flight MH370, which disappeared over the South China Sea with 239 passengers and crew aboard.

Hishamuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s defence minister and acting transport minister, said closed circuit TV pictures of the two were also handed to US officials in Kuala Lumpur.High quality global journalism requires investment. 

The Thai travel agent who booked the tickets for the men told the Financial Times on Monday that she had been asked to arrange the travel by an Iranian contact.

The two men were travelling on flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Italian and Austrian passports that were later confirmed to have been lost or stolen. They were then scheduled to fly together to Amsterdam, before catching separate connecting flights to Copenhagen and Frankfurt.

While their use of stolen passports has raised fears of terrorist involvement, travel documents are stolen frequently in the region and used for illegal immigration or criminal activities such as drug smuggling.

Benjaporn Krutnait, owner of the Grand Horizon travel agency in Pattaya, Thailand, said the Iranian, a long-term business contact who she knew only as “Mr Ali”, first asked her to book cheap tickets to Europe for the two men on March 1. Ms Benjaporn initially reserved one of the men on a Qatar Airways flight and the other on Etihad.

But the tickets expired when Ms Benjaporn did not hear back from Mr Ali. When he contacted her again on Thursday, she rebooked the men on the Malaysia Airlines flight through Beijing because it was the cheapest available. Ms Benjaporn booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines via a code share arrangement.

A friend of Mr Ali paid Ms Benjaporn cash for the tickets, she said, adding that it was quite common for people to book tickets in Pattaya through middle men such as Mr Ali, who then take a commission.

Mr Ali could not immediately be reached for comment on a Tehran mobile number provided by Ms Benjaporn. She added that she had known Mr Ali for about three years, during which time he spent a lot of time in Pattaya and booked travel for himself or his contacts at least once a month on average. There is no evidence that Mr Ali knew the two men were travelling on stolen passports.High quality global journalism requires investment.Ms Benjaporn said she did not believe Mr Ali was linked to terrorism, particularly as he had not specified booking the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight but had instead asked for the cheapest route to Europe. Ms Benjaporn said she was speaking about the case because she was concerned over the speculation about a terrorist attack and wanted the facts to be known.

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UPDATED --- AND THEN THERE'S THIS:

One of the two suspects who boarded flight MH370 is not from Xinjiang, the north-west region of China racked by violent clashes between native Uighurs and the authorities, according to Malaysia’s Star Online citing a Malaysia police official. 

Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said the man has been identified based on CCTV footage gathered from KLIA.

“I can confirm that he is not a Malaysian, but cannot divulge which country he is from yet,” said Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar at the Kajang police headquarters yesterday.

When asked if both of the men had immigration records of entering the country, Khalid said that they were in the midst of investigating the issue.

“The man is not from XinJiang China.”

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via Times of London: image of "Tomorrow's front page: FBI fears terrorists destroyed airliner

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Taiwanese authorities did state they had tightened security at airports after they were informed last week of a possible terrorist threat to transport services in China, the head of its National Security Bureau told the official Central News Agency.

Recall that in the case of the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the Clinton Administration was hell-bent on treating the incident as a crime and not as an act of jihad war.

They had a similar pattern of behavior when it came to the destruction of TWA flight 800.

Let us not forget that the Bonjina plot, that was only discovered by accident by a Philippine fire brigade watch commander's persistent curiosity about the cause of an apartment fire. It wa too far removed from the control of those who were in denial about jihad war against the west that it could not be suppressed.

The architects of Bojinka were Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The plot has a nexus in Cebu, Philippines. Concindenly, Terry Nichols, of OK City bomb fame, made "expensive and unexplained trips to the Philippines, many times without his Filipino mail order bride. The court record reveals the Oklahoma City bomber was in Cebu City in December 1994 at the same time as the mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack, Ramzi Yousef."

SOURCE

Comment from The Buck Wheat:

Also it should be recalled that the Clinton Administration also showed no interest whatsoever in any hints that the OKC bomb was anything other than a domestic terror plot, despite plenty of eye witness accounts of a "John Doe Number 2" who looked Arab.

Why bring this up? When liberals (in any country) cannot face the truth about Islam, and even actively deny evidence of its war against the non-Islamic world, we are going to have many more mass casualty events and have airliners disappear.