Malaysia suspected MH370 downed in murder-suicide: Tony Abbott
19 February, 2020
Former Australian primary minister Tony Abbott has claimed "very top" level Malaysian officials believed vanished Airline flight MH370 was first deliberated downed by the captain found in a mass murder-suicide.
The Malaysia Airlines plane vanished on Mar 8, 2014 carrying 239 persons - mostly from China - on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
No signal of the plane was found in a 120,000 sq km Indian Sea search zone and the Australian-led search, the major in aviation record, was suspended in January 2017.
A US exploration organization launched a private hunt in 2018 nonetheless it ended after almost a year of scouring the seabed without accomplishment.
The disappearance of the plane is definitely the subject of a bunch of theories - which range from the credible to outlandish - including that veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah had gone rogue.
Within an excerpt from a Sky Media documentary airing Wednesday, Abbott claims he was told within weekly of it vanishing that Malaysia believed the captain had intentionally downed the jet.
"My clear understanding from the very top levels of the Malaysian federal government is that from extremely, very early on below, they thought it had been murder-suicide by the pilot," he said.
"I'm not likely to say who said what to whom but let me reiterate, I would like to be absolutely crystal clear, it was understood at the best levels that this was almost certainly murder-suicide by the pilot - mass murder-suicide by the pilot."
Zaharie's family and friends have long strongly rejected such claims as baseless.
In 2016, Malaysian officials revealed he previously plotted a path over the Indian Sea on a own home flight simulator but stressed this didn't prove he deliberately crashed the plane.
A final report into the tragedy produced in 2018 pointed to failings by air traffic control and said the span of the plane was changed manually.
But they failed to come up with any organization conclusions, leaving family members angry and disappointed.
Six passengers were Australian, including four from Queensland talk about, where Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk this week suggested authorities may possibly pursue an inquest to their deaths.
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