New Straits Times......
12 April 2014| last updated at 06:31PM
MH370 Tragedy: Hishammuddin: Gov't can't confirm reports without verification
KLUANG: The government can't confirm any reports on MAS flight MH370 unless they can be verified by the relevant authorities.
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said the authorities have received a lot of reports and leads, including from local and foreign media organisations, but when they investigated the leads, they turned out to be baseless.
"Unless we can have verifications, we can't comment on these reports," said Hishammuddin.
He was commenting on the New Straits Times frontpage report yesterday which said that the co-pilot of MH370 Fariq Abd Hamid made a call from his mobile phone while the plane was flying low over Penang on the day the plane went missing.
"If this did happened, we would have known about it earlier," said Hishammuddin.
He was speaking to the media after performing the 'Solat Hajat' with the congregation of Nurul Iman Mosque in Taman Sri Lambak here.
He also named the two officers from the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) who have been absorbed into the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC).
They are Noor Izhar Baharin, the principal assistant director of DCA and the officer in charge of SAR and Air Safety of the DCA and Muhammad Irfan Ahmad Baidove, the assistant director of the Kuala Lumpur Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre.
"This is important because JACC, as the body responsible for the SAR efforts, must have a direct contact with Kuala Lumpur," said Hishammuddin.
12 April 2014| last updated at 03:54PM
MH370 Tragedy: With no new signals, Abbott sees long jet search
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PERTH: With no new underwater signals detected, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Saturday that the massive search for the Malaysian jet would likely continue “for a long time” as electronic transmissions from the dying black boxes were fading fast.
Abbott appeared to couch his comments from a day earlier while on a visit to China, where he met President Xi Jinping. He said Friday he was “very confident” signals heard by an Australian ship towing a U.S. Navy device that detects flight recorder pings are coming from the Boeing 777.
He continued to express this belief on Saturday, but added that the job of finding the plane that disappeared March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing remains arduous.
“No one should underestimate the difficulties of the task still ahead of us,” he said on the last day of his China trip. We have “very considerably narrowed down the search area, but trying to locate anything 4.5 kilometers beneath the surface of the ocean about 1,000 kilometers from land is a massive, massive task and it is likely to continue for a long time to come,” Abbott said.
After analyzing satellite data, officials believe the plane with 239 people aboard flew off course for an unknown reason and went down in the southern Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia.
Search crews are scrambling because the batteries powering the recorders’ locator beacons last only about a month, and that window has already passed. Finding the devices after the batteries die will be extremely difficult due to the extreme depth of the water in that area.
Two sounds heard a week ago by the Australian ship Ocean Shield, towing the ping locator, were determined to be consistent with the signals emitted from the black boxes. Two more pings were detected in the same general area Tuesday.
“Given that the signal from the black box is rapidly fading, what we are now doing is trying to get as many detections as we can,” Abbott said. “So that we can narrow the search area down to as small an area as possible.”
The underwater search zone is currently a 1,300-square-kilometer (500-square-mile) patch of the seabed, about the size of the city of Los Angeles.
The searchers want to pinpoint the exact location of the source of the sounds — or as close as they can get — and then send down a robotic submersible to look for wreckage. But the sub will not be deployed until officials are confident that no other electronic signals are
present.
The Bluefin 21 submersible takes six times longer to cover the same area as the ping locator.
That’s about six weeks to two months to canvass the current underwater zone. The signals are also coming from 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) below the surface, which is the deepest the Bluefin can dive.
The search coordination center has said it was considering options in case a deeper-diving sub is needed.
The surface area to be searched for floating debris had been narrowed to 41,393 square kilometers (15 982 square miles) of ocean extending from about 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of Perth. Up to 10 planes and 14 ships were searching Saturday. -- AP
AIRBORNE CONTACT: Telco tower in Penang picked up phone signal
KUALA LUMPUR: A CREW member of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 made a desperate call from his mobile phone as the plane was flying low near Penang, the morning it went missing.
The latest breakthrough in the ongoing criminal investigation traced the source of the call to co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's phone.
The New Straits Times has learnt that investigators are poring over this discovery as they try to piece together what had happened moments before the Boeing 777-22ER twinjet went off the radar, some 200 nautical miles (320km) northwest of Penang on March 8.
It is understood that the aircraft with 239 people on board was flying at an altitude low enough for the nearest telecommunications tower to pick up his phone's signal.
His call, however, ended abruptly, but not before contact was established with a telecommunications sub-station in the state.
However, the NST is unable to ascertain who Fariq was trying to call as sources chose not to divulge details of the investigation. The links that police are trying to establish are also unclear.
"The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make. On why the call was cut off, it was likely because the aircraft was fast moving away from the tower and had not come under the coverage of the next one," the sources said.
It was also established that Fariq's last communication through the WhatsApp Messenger application was about 11.30pm on March 7, just before he boarded the aircraft for his six-hour flight to Beijing.
The NST was also told that checks on Fariq's phone history showed that the last person he spoke to was "one of his regular contacts (a number that frequently appears on his outgoing phone logs)".
This call was made no more than two hours before the flight took off at 12.41am from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).
A different set of sources close to the investigations told the NST that checks on Fariq's phone showed that connection to the phone had been "detached" before the plane took off.
"This is usually the result of the phone being switched off. At one point, however, when the airplane was airborne, between waypoint Igari and the spot near Penang (just before it went missing from radar), the line was 'reattached'.
"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again," the sources said.
The flight, with a crew of 12, was supposed to take off at 12.35am.
The jetliner disappeared from commercial radar about an hour later, while it was flying over the South China Sea. It was supposed to have landed in Beijing at 6.30am the same day.
Experts said it was possible for a mobile phone to be connected to a telecommunications tower at an altitude of 7,000 feet.
An NST exclusive on March 16, quoted investigators as saying that the jetliner had dropped to as low as 5,000 feet after it made the turnback at waypoint Igari in the South China Sea before it crossed Peninsular Malaysia headed towards Penang.
Meanwhile, Fariq's cousin Nursyafiqah Kamarudin, 18, told the NST on Monday that Fariq, who would have turned 28 on April 1, was very close to his mother.
"If Fariq could make one call before the plane disappeared, it would have been to her."
Police have not cleared the 227 passengers of the flight MH370 of possible foul play. Clearance has also not been given to the crew.
Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar had, on April 2, said they had "obtained some clues" on what might have happened to the flight, based on the statements recorded from 176 people. This number has climbed to 205 as of yesterday.
Khalid had also said the crew were among the main "subjects of the investigations".
Their probe had been focused on four possible areas -- hijack, sabotage, as well as personal and psychological problems.
They are investigating the case under Section 130C of the Penal Code, which deals with hijacking, terrorism and sabotage offences, as well as the Security Offences (Special Measures) and Aviation Offences Acts.
On why these findings were not made known, the sources said, like criminal investigations by any police force, details of an ongoing probe would not be made public.
"Not only are they not obliged to, it also puts the investigation at risk if the findings are revealed," the sources said.
The team carrying out this probe is separate from the International Investigating Team (IIT), which comprises agencies with expertise in satellite communications and aircraft performance.
The IIT is also represented by Inmarsat, Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) and Rolls-Royce from the United Kingdom, China's Civil Aviation Administration and Aircraft Accident Investigation Department (AAID), and from the United States, National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Federal Bureau Investigation and the Triple Seven's manufacturer, Boeing.
This team had been working over the past weeks, refining data, including those extracted from radars and satellites, in narrowing down the search area, which has since been centred in the Indian Ocean.
While some details from the IIT's investigations have been released to appease family members' and the media's demand for information, police said they were not at liberty to divulge details of the probe for fear that it could jeopardise their investigation.
The FBI has been assisting police, including sharing intelligence and expertise.
Kuala Lumpur had also, on April 5, announced the appointment of an independent "Investigator in Charge" to lead an investigating team, which will include three groups.
They are an airworthiness group to look at issues such as maintenance records, structures and systems; an operations group to examine, among others, flight recorders, operations and meteorology; and, a medical and human factors group to investigate areas of psychology and survival factors.
Six days ago, the New Sunday Times front-paged a report that said investigators had, over the last few weeks, sifted through hundreds of hours of closed-circuit television footage, not only from cameras in most corners of KLIA, but all the way back to a toll plaza 8.8km away, which most passengers would have had to pass through to reach KLIA. Videos were also taken from the stretch of road leading to the airport.
Their movements were traced by the CCTVs right up to the time they showed up at gate C1, in the West Zone of the airport's Satellite Building, where the plane was parked.
It was also learnt that while Fariq and chief stewardess Goh Sock Lay, 45, communicated via the WhatsApp messenger application at 11.30pm, pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, made his last contact through the application at 7.45pm, some five hours before flying off.
Malaysia Chronicle......
Saturday, 12 April 2014 10:17
NO NEW signals from 'MH370 black box' in past 24 hrs: GLOOM REPLACES OPTIMISM
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NO new acoustic signals have been detected in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Hopes of recovering the aircraft’s black box have risen significantly in the past week after the Australian vessel Ocean Shield detected four signals believed to have come from the jet’s flight recorder.
However, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre says no new signals have been detected in the past 24 hours.
Nine military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships will continue the hunt for MH370 today, searching an area of more than 41,000 square km about 23,000km northwest of Perth.
That large search area again appears to contradict Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s recent suggestion that the search area in the Indian Ocean has very much narrowed.
Mr Abbott told his Chinese counterpart that search teams have narrowed the area where they believe MH370’s black box is to within 10km.
The PM gave Chinese President Xi Jinping a private and detailed briefing in Beijing about the latest on the search for the missing Boeing 777-200ER aircraft which had 154 Chinese people on board.
He told the President before a State dinner with the Australian premiers at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing — an unprecedented audience — that search teams led by the Australian ship Ocean Shield had narrowed down the area in the Indian Ocean where pings from the flight recorders are being received to a grid of around 10km by 10km.
Chinese briefing. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, right, chats with his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak. Source: AP
He told President Xi that there is now a high degree of confidence that the signals were the black boxes from the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight.
The PM then personally invited President Xi to address the Australian parliament later this year. President Xi will be only the second Chinese leader to be invited to address Parliament since Hu Jintao visited in 2007.
The Australian vessel Ocean Shield towing a US Navy device that detects black box signals has to date recorded four signals that are believed to have come from at least a black box flight recorder.
The Ocean Shield was today in an area about 2200km northwest of Perth continuing sweeps of its pinger locator to detect further signals.
Orion aircraft were also continuing acoustic searches. - news.com.au
Saturday, 12 April 2014 18:21
TO WARN OR TO SAY GOODBYE? MH370 co-pilot, chief stewardess made DESPERATE calls before going off radar
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KUALA LUMPUR - A CREW member of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 made a desperate call from his mobile phone as the plane was flying low near Penang, the morning it went missing.
The latest breakthrough in the ongoing criminal investigation traced the source of the call to co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's phone.
The New Straits Times has learnt that investigators are poring over this discovery as they try to piece together what had happened moments before the Boeing 777-22ER twinjet went off the radar, some 200 nautical miles (320km) northwest of Penang on March 8.
It is understood that the aircraft with 239 people on board was flying at an altitude low enough for the nearest telecommunications tower to pick up his phone's signal.
His call, however, ended abruptly, but not before contact was established with a telecommunications sub-station in the state.
However, the NST is unable to ascertain who Fariq was trying to call as sources chose not to divulge details of the investigation. The links that police are trying to establish are also unclear.
"The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make. On why the call was cut off, it was likely because the aircraft was fast moving away from the tower and had not come under the coverage of the next one," the sources said.
It was also established that Fariq's last communication through the WhatsApp Messenger application was about 11.30pm on March 7, just before he boarded the aircraft for his six-hour flight to Beijing.
The NST was also told that checks on Fariq's phone history showed that the last person he spoke to was "one of his regular contacts (a number that frequently appears on his outgoing phone logs)".
This call was made no more than two hours before the flight took off at 12.41am from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).
A different set of sources close to the investigations told the NST that checks on Fariq's phone showed that connection to the phone had been "detached" before the plane took off.
"This is usually the result of the phone being switched off. At one point, however, when the airplane was airborne, between waypoint Igari and the spot near Penang (just before it went missing from radar), the line was 'reattached'.
"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again," the sources said.
The flight, with a crew of 12, was supposed to take off at 12.35am.
The jetliner disappeared from commercial radar about an hour later, while it was flying over the South China Sea. It was supposed to have landed in Beijing at 6.30am the same day.
Experts said it was possible for a mobile phone to be connected to a telecommunications tower at an altitude of 7,000 feet.
An NST exclusive on March 16, quoted investigators as saying that the jetliner had dropped to as low as 5,000 feet after it made the turnback at waypoint Igari in the South China Sea before it crossed Peninsular Malaysia headed towards Penang.
Meanwhile, Fariq's cousin Nursyafiqah Kamarudin, 18, told the NST on Monday that Fariq, who would have turned 28 on April 1, was very close to his mother.
"If Fariq could make one call before the plane disappeared, it would have been to her."
Police have not cleared the 227 passengers of the flight MH370 of possible foul play. Clearance has also not been given to the crew.
Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar had, on April 2, said they had "obtained some clues" on what might have happened to the flight, based on the statements recorded from 176 people. This number has climbed to 205 as of yesterday.
Khalid had also said the crew were among the main "subjects of the investigations".
Their probe had been focused on four possible areas -- hijack, sabotage, as well as personal and psychological problems.
They are investigating the case under Section 130C of the Penal Code, which deals with hijacking, terrorism and sabotage offences, as well as the Security Offences (Special Measures) and Aviation Offences Acts.
On why these findings were not made known, the sources said, like criminal investigations by any police force, details of an ongoing probe would not be made public.
"Not only are they not obliged to, it also puts the investigation at risk if the findings are revealed," the sources said.
The team carrying out this probe is separate from the International Investigating Team (IIT), which comprises agencies with expertise in satellite communications and aircraft performance.
The IIT is also represented by Inmarsat, Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) and Rolls-Royce from the United Kingdom, China's Civil Aviation Administration and Aircraft Accident Investigation Department (AAID), and from the United States, National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Federal Bureau Investigation and the Triple Seven's manufacturer, Boeing.
This team had been working over the past weeks, refining data, including those extracted from radars and satellites, in narrowing down the search area, which has since been centred in the Indian Ocean.
While some details from the IIT's investigations have been released to appease family members' and the media's demand for information, police said they were not at liberty to divulge details of the probe for fear that it could jeopardise their investigation.
The FBI has been assisting police, including sharing intelligence and expertise.
Kuala Lumpur had also, on April 5, announced the appointment of an independent "Investigator in Charge" to lead an investigating team, which will include three groups.
They are an airworthiness group to look at issues such as maintenance records, structures and systems; an operations group to examine, among others, flight recorders, operations and meteorology; and, a medical and human factors group to investigate areas of psychology and survival factors.
Six days ago, the New Sunday Times front-paged a report that said investigators had, over the last few weeks, sifted through hundreds of hours of closed-circuit television footage, not only from cameras in most corners of KLIA, but all the way back to a toll plaza 8.8km away, which most passengers would have had to pass through to reach KLIA. Videos were also taken from the stretch of road leading to the airport.
Their movements were traced by the CCTVs right up to the time they showed up at gate C1, in the West Zone of the airport's Satellite Building, where the plane was parked.
It was also learnt that while Fariq and chief stewardess Goh Sock Lay, 45, communicated via the WhatsApp messenger application at 11.30pm, pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, made his last contact through the application at 7.45pm, some five hours before flying off. - NST
FWIW - a little conspiracy article from Deb Dupre.....
Before Its News
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Mystery deepens.......
FWIW - a little conspiracy article from Deb Dupre.....
Before Its News
New Chilling Ghost MH370 Diego Garcia Links
Saturday, April 12, 2014 7:47
Diego Garcia: Footprint of Freedom or Disappearances?
While the U.S. has vehemently refuted new claims that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 landed on Diego Garcia island south of the Maldives in the Central Indian Ocean, new information along with charity organization Reprieve’s previous research shows a sordid history of secret, unrecorded flights to the island, lies about them, torture there, and the British Government’s direct involvement there with the United States, its CIA and military.
“‘More than one independent source has suggested logs of flights through Diego Garcia have been destroyed. However, an examination of records available for four other rendition flights conducted by the same plane (N379P) reveals it routinely operated under various ‘special status designators’ allowing them to fly wherever they liked, whenever they liked, indicating knowledge – and authorisation – at the highest echelons of both US and British governments. - Reprieve (emphasis added)
After Flight MH370′s disappearance on March 8, military failures to follow standard operating procedures, increased difficulties in searching for the jetliner, new reports say. This failure spurred theories of what happened, a primary one being involvement of Diego Garcia.
A spokesman for the U.S. embassy based in Malaysia, however, has denied such claims this week, The Mirror reported.
“There was no indication that MH370 flew anywhere near Maldives or Diego Garcia,” the spokesman said.
Of course, that’s not what Maldives islanders say, nor what some radar analysts say. But then, Diego Garcia spokesmen have a bad habit of lying, according to old and new evidence that has surfaced this week.
The “spokesman,” another in the long line of unnamed MH370 sources, said the missing jetliner “did not land in Diego Garcia.” U.S authorities are working with Malaysia and Australia and other countries striving hard to locate Malaysian Flight MH370 based on areas identified by Malaysian and other international aviation officials, the mystery spokesman said.
To believe or not to believe Diego Garcia spokesman
Diego Garcia’s tragic history is based on blatant lies, cruelty and cover ups, as further exposed since MH370 supposedly “disappeared.”
Friday, more of Diego Garcia’s sordid past and cover-up were exposed, thanks to UK charity Reprieve and a US Senate report that surfaced. The report indicates the British government has been “far more than complicit” in military abuses at the Diego Garcia black site, where detained suspects rendered (kidnapped) have been taken for “interrogation” (torture).
Prisoners known to be taken to Diego Garcia’s for abuses include: Mustafa Setmarium Naser and Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, according to Reprieve.
Britain leased the entire island to the US to use for black operations. Before the US took control of the island, the Brits deprived 4000 Diego Garcia residents of food, gassed their pets, placed the islanders on boats without their belongings, and dumped them in a slum over 1,000 miles away, where to this day, they struggle to survive.
“What did [the British military] get for their cooperation?” Before Its News contributor Tom Dennen asks. “A deal on Polaris missiles.”
“The Convention Against Torture does not apply on Diego Garcia” - British Government
Suspicions first arose in an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair on Dec. 28 2002, in which Human Rights Watch suggested US forces were holding and interrogating “Al Qaeda suspects” on Diego Garcia,violating international law and legal obligations of the British government, according to Reprieve. “In a subsequent series of questions and answers in Parliament between 2003 until 2008, the government consistently denied the allegations.” [See: Ghost Detention On Diego Garcia, Reprieve]
In October 2003, Time Magazine cited records from the interrogation of US prisoner Hambali, reportedly conducted on the island. Respected international investigators at the Council of Europe and the United Nations expressed similar suspicions. The US officials then made seemingly careless public statements confirming the use of Diego Garcia for secret detentions.
The British government, in response, consistently referred to US assurances to the contrary, suggesting limited British presence on, and responsibility for, the island. In fact, however, the UK has a significant military and administrative presence on Diego Garcia, that has its own independent administration run by the East Africa Desk of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.
The 1966 Anglo-American Agreement specifies that British authorities retain ‘exclusive jurisdiction over members of the United States forces with respect to offences, including offences relating to security, punishable by law in force in the territory but not by the law of the United States’.
After years of US and UK officials lying, finally, on Feb. 21 2008, then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband conceded by statement to Parliament and by letter to Clive Stafford Smith, head of Reprieve, that two rendition flights carrying US prisoners had stopped on Diego Garcia, in Jan. and Sept. 2002. The correspondence claimed ”an error in the earlier US records search meant that these cases did not come to light”.
By process of elimination, Reprieve identified one prisoner rendered through Diego Garcia as Egyptian national Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni. “His case shows how the US secret prison system grew out of existing practices with partner states, such as Egypt, aided by cooperating states, like Britain,” Reprieve says. “It is, therefore, inconceivable that the UK was not aware of how the existing US rendition programme accelerated and broadened following 9/11.”
Excluding renditions from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay, at least 150-200 renditions occurred between 2001 and 2004, and in the lead-up to Madni’s apprehension, the press reported at least five high-profile rendition cases. More significantly, by law the UK must be informed of all movements of US ships and aircraft on or through Diego Garcia, and the US requires British permission to bring “unlawful combatants” onto the island.”
Was Prince William, therefore, informed MH370 passengers would be taken to Diego Garcia, thus explaining his surprise arrival in the Maldives the day the plane went missing and his disappearance after his 4-7 day supposed romantic holiday in the Maldives, for three weeks, supposedly on an “Asia Pacific tour”? No Asian or Pacific nation official or media reported his visiting them at that time.
Related articles:
According to the George Bush and Barack Obama administrations, anyone, anywhere, for any reason can be deemed an “unlawful combatant.” This is a primary reason for widespread speculation that the US is directly involved in the missing 239 people who boarded Flight 370 and that Diego Garcia is also involved.
“More than one independent source has suggested logs of flights through Diego Garcia have been destroyed,” says Reprieve. ”However, an examination of records available for four other rendition flights conducted by the same plane (N379P) reveals that it routinely operated under various “special status designators” allowing them to fly wherever they liked, whenever they liked, which would indicate knowledge – and authorisation – at the highest echelons of both the US and the British governments.
“Crucially, flights can only be granted this special status when ‘specifically authorised by the relevant national authority’, indicating a significant degree of British complicity,” Reprieve states. Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing that provided flight-planning and logisitcal support in the transfer of prisoners, might have filed false flight logs for N379P. Such falsification involved not only Jeppesen, but also a state party, in this case the UK.
It has also been exposed by Deborah Dupré that the U.S. National Security Agency was targeting Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE. A special operation has been under way called Operation Shotgiant, specifically targeting them for “national security” issues, as Edward Snowden documents revealed.
Both Huawei and ZTE, major telecommunications companies, had top experts board MH370. Operation Shotgiant was to find links between Huawei, the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army. Congress and media has identified Huawei as a national security threat to the US – on account of its unproven hacking activities with respect to US networks. The US began using a back door to hack the Chinese, doing the same to Chinese networks – and possibly much more.
“If it is true, the irony is that what they are doing to us is exactly what they have always charged the Chinese are doing through us….” said William B. Plummer, Huawei’s vice president of external affairs, in an email to The Associated Press. [Read: MH370: NSA’s Been Targeting Huawei Says Snowden Doc, Black ‘Operation Shotgiant’, by Deborah Dupré.]
Huawei produces many electronic products, including cutting edge network equipment, such as WLAN routers and fiber optic hardware. For America’s NSA, that craves total domination in global cyberspace, and for the Pentagon, that craves Full Spectrum Dominance of the world, full control over these technologies is decisive.
Awful truth about Brits participation in kidnapping innocent people and worse
Thursday, a report based on leaked accounts of a US Senate investigation into the CIA’s kidnap and torture programme after 9/11, contradicts years of British government denials that it allowed the US to use Diego Garcia for its “extraordinary rendition” torture programme. The Diego Garcia black siteheld “high-value” detainees with the “full co-operation” of the British government, according to Al Jazeera America, quoting US officials familiar with the Senate report. (Read: MH370: Brits’ Hand In Diego Garcia CIA Black Ops ‘Far Beyond Complicity’)
By Thursday night, UK Minister of Parliament William Hague, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs since 2010, was facing urgent demands from international and British lawyers representing CIA “extraordinary rendition” programme victims to clarify the new allegations.
“We need to know immediately whether ministers misled Parliament over CIA torture on British soil,” said Cori Crider, Reprieve’s strategic director. “If the CIA operated a black site on Diego Garcia, then a string of official statements, from both this and the last government, were totally false. Were ministers asleep at the wheel? Or, as the report suggests, have we been lied to for years?”
New details could be confirmed within weeks after the US Senate voted last week to declassify a 500-page summary of its three-year investigation into the CIA’s kidnap and torture programme. This involves examining some six million classified documents. Whether or not any of those will shed more light on the ghost MH370 flight remains unknown, it is specualted they will.
“The almost total absence of flight logs for suspicious flights through Diego Garcia suggests similar falsification has occurred,” says Repreive.
“As Mr Madni’s case unfolds, many more questions are raised than answered about Britain’s role in US detentions, with claims to ignorance increasingly difficult to accept.
“It is time for the UK government to reveal precisely who else has been held on and rendered through Diego Garcia, what happened to them there, and where they are now.”
Learn more: Diego Garcia’s case history
Mystery deepens.......
Investigators reveal MH370 co-pilot tried to make a call from his mobile phone after the aircraft 'vanished' but 'was abruptly cut off' as U.S. deny reports the plane landed at their remote military base
- Investigators say call was made from Fariq Abdul Hamid's mobile phone
- It was flying low enough for a sub-station in Penang to pick up signal
- Details of who Fariq was trying to call have not been disclosed
- It possible for a mobile phone to be connected at an altitude of 7,000 feet
- U.S. denies reports plane landed at base on remote island of Diego Garcia
Fariq Abdul Hamid made a call from his mobile phone as the aircraft flew low over the west coast of Malaysia
The co-pilot of missing flight MH370 made a call from his mobile phone while the aircraft flew low over the west coast of Malaysia, it was revealed today as the U.S. denied reports the plane landed at a military base on the remote island of Diego Garcia.
Investigators have learned that the call was made from Fariq Abdul Hamid's mobile phone as the Boeing 777 flew low near the island of Penang, on the north of Malaysia's west coast.
The New Straits Times reported the aircraft, with 239 people on board, was flying low enough for the nearest
telecommunications tower to pick up Fariq's signal.
The call ended abrupty, however it has been learned that contact was definitely established with a telecommunications sub-station in Penang state.
The paper said it had been unable to ascertain who Fariq was trying to call 'as sources chose not to divulge details of the investigation.'
It added: 'The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make.
'On why the call was cut off, it was likely because the aircraft was fast moving away from the tower and had not come under the coverage of the next one,' the paper said, quoting 'sources'.
The paper added that it had also been established that Fariq's last communication was through the WhatsApp Messenger app and that it had been made at about 11.30pm on March 7, shortly before he boarded the aircraft for the six-hour flight to Beijing.
The New Straits Times said it had been told checks on Fariq's phone history showed that the last person he spoke to was 'one of his regular contacts - 'a number that frequently appears on his outgoing phone logs'.
That last call, said the paper, was made no more than two hours before the flight took off 12.41am on March 8 from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Scroll down for video
graphic showing Malaysia Airlines' route as it took off and its final contact with air traffic control. It is believed a call was made from Fariq's phone near the island of Penang. Today the U.S also denied reports the plane landed in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean
HMS Echo, which has arrived in the area of the southern Indian Ocean where 'pings' thought to be from the black box of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been detected
HMAS Toowoomba searching for debris of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 at sea in the Indian Ocean
Separate sources told the paper that checks on Fariq's phone showed that connection to the phone when he made that last call before he boarded the plane had been 'detached'.
'This is usually the result of the phone being switched off.
'At one point, however, when the airplane was airborne, between waypoint Igari and the spot near Penang (just before the aircraft went missing from radar), the line was "reattached".'
Image released by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows the current planned search area along the old ones in the Indian Ocean, West of Australia, for the wreckage of flight MH370
The paper said that a reattachment does not necessarily meant that a call was made. It could also be the result of the phone being switched on again.
The revelation came as the U.S. denied claims the missing flight had landed at its military base on the remote island of Diego Garcia.
There had been rumours that the jetliner could have headed for the small coral atoll in the Indian Ocean after it veered off course while travelling between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Beijing, China on March 8.
However, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in the Malaysian capital denied the allegation.
According to Malaysia's Star newspaper, the spokesman said: 'There was no indication that MH370 flew anywhere near the Maldives or Diego Garcia.
'MH370 did not land in Diego Garcia.'
Diego Garcia is about 3,500km from Malaysia.
Meanwhile experts said today that it was possible for a mobile phone to be connected to a telecommunications tower at an altitude of 7,000 feet - which is low for a large jet like the Boeing 777 unless it was flying at high speed to maintain height.
The New Straits Times said that Fariq's cousin, Nursyafiqah Kamarudin, 18, had said recently that the 28-year-old co-pilot was very close to his mother.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) P3 Orion Rescue Flight 795 crew member is seen during a search for debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight
Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) Co Pilot squadron Leader Brett McKenzie (left) and Flight Engineer Trent Wyatt sit in the cockpit aboard a P3 Orion maratime search aircraft
'If Fariq could make one call before the plane disappeared, it would have been to her,' said the cousin.
TIMELINE OF LOST FLIGHT MH370
March 8: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 loses contact with air traffic controllers between ne and two hours after takeoff
March 9: Radar indicates flight may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing
March 11: Interpol names two Iranian men who got on jet with stolen passports
March 12: Search expands to area from China to India
March 15: Malaysian authorities say they believe 'deliberate action' caused the plane to veer off course and someone shut down its tracking systems.
March 20: Search teams spot possible wreckage in Southern Indian Ocean, 1,500 miles off western coast of Australia
March 24: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says it is 'beyond any doubt' that the 239 passengers and crew perished in the Indian Ocean.
March 30: Daughter of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah says her father recently acted strangely
April 7: Australian ship Ocean Shielf detects underwater signals consistent with black boxes
April 9: Ocean Shield detects two more signals
April 11: Australian authorities pinpoint location
Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said earlier in the week that investigators had obtained 'some clues' as to what might have happened, based on the statements from 176 people who had been interviewed.
The crew, he said, were the main subjects of the investigation, a probe which has focused on four possible areas - hijack, sabotage, and personal and psychological problems among the crew or passengers.
The dramatic revelation that Fariq tried to make a phone call after regular communication from the aircraft to ground control was lost opens up a new field of speculation - and more questions about the mysterious disappearance of the jet.
If Fariq was able to make a call, why was there no attempt by the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, to also make a mobile phone call ?
Did Fariq know he was going to die and had, as his cousin had suggested, tried to phone his mother to say goodbye ?
An email received by the Mail recently suggested that the aircraft had been hijacked and that the pilots had been ordered to fly around Malaysian and Indonesian air space while negotiations were carried out.
Those negotiations, said the email - from a source in Malaysia which could not be verified - demanded the dropping of a jail sentence imposed on Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
The hijackers, said the email, gave government negotiators five hours to meet their demands or the plane would be destroyed.
Last night Malaysia's Acting Transport Minister said he could not comment on the report in the New Straits Times adding that 'if it is true, we would have known about it much earlier.'
Mr Hishammuddin Hussein made his remarks to the Malaysian news agency, Bernama, pointing out that he had adopted the approach not to confirm anything without any corroboration or verification from the time when the aircraft was reported missing.
The Star newspaper, which is in opposition to the New Straits Times, interpreted Mr Hishammuddin's remarks as refuting the report about co-pilot Fariq attempting to make a mobile phone call.
Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein (centre) speaks during a press conference on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in Kuala Lumpur
The Minister, who is also Defence Minister, told the news agency that he hoped the public understood what he was going through because such 'baseless information' not only affected operations but also the families of the passengers and the crew of the aircraft.
Mr Hishamuddin made his comments after performing prayers at a mosque in Kluang, Malaysia, earlier in the day.
Yesterday, it looked like the black box may had been located deep in the Indian Ocean.
Perth radio station 6PR tweeted the discovery, citing aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas, who revealed the flight recorder had finally been found more than a month after the Boeing 777 went missing.
Buddhist monks write messages ahead of a mass prayer for the missing passengers of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, in Kuala Lumpur
Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is in China, said searchers are 'very confident' the signals detected were from the black box were from MH370.
'I really don't want to give any more information than that at this stage...as a sign of respect to the Chinese people and their families.'
Speaking from Shanghai, China, Mr Abbott added that today's discovery was a huge step in solving the mystery - and even claimed that officials believe they can now pinpoint the position of the missing black box flight recorder to ‘within some kilometres’.
'This is probably the most difficult search in human history,' he said. '
Among tragedy, however, there is hope. We are confident we know the position of the black box to the nearest kilometre.
'But confidence in the position is not the same as recovering the wreckage from more than 4.5km beneath the sea and finally determining all that happened on that flight.'
The fact that Mr Abbott has reportedly used the word 'confident' suggests that searchers are finally convinced that weeks of scouring the Indian Ocean might now have resulted in the discovery of the missing Boeing 777.
Mr Abbott's announcement came after a fifth ping was detected around 1,500 miles north west of Perth, in western Australia.
The signal was captured on Thursday by a Royal Australian Air Force Orion P-3 aircraft, which had been dropping sonar buoys into the water at the time.
Yesterday's breakthrough came as black box manufacturer Dukane Seacom said batteries powering the beacon could last for 40 days rather than the 30 previously thought.
A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) AP-3C Orion conducts a low level fly-by before dropping supplies to Australian Navy ship HMAS Toowoomba
If it is discovered, the plane's black box, or flight data and cockpit voice recorders, may hold the answers to why the Boeing 777 lost communications and veered so far off course when it vanished while flying to Beijing.
Search crews are racing against time because the batteries powering the devices' locator beacons last only about a month - and more than a month has passed since the plane disappeared.
Finding the black boxes after the batteries fail will be extremely difficult because the water in the area is 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) deep.
The Australian ship Ocean Shield is towing a U.S. Navy device that detects black box signals, and two sounds it heard last Saturday were determined to be consistent with the signals emitted from aircraft flight recorders.
Two more sounds were detected in the same general area on Tuesday - just days before the fifth ping was detected on Thursday.
Leading Seaman Aircrewman (LSA) Daniel Colbert winching LSA Joel Young, into the water of the Indian Ocean
The underwater search zone is currently a 1,300-square-kilometre(500-square-mile) patch of the ocean floor, about the size of the city of Los Angeles.
Investigators believe the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on a flight path calculated from its contacts with a satellite and analysis of its speed and fuel capacity.
Malaysia's government has now begun to investigate civil aviation and military authorities to determine why opportunities to identify and track Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 were missed in the chaotic hours after it vanished, two officials said.
In an interview with Reuters last weekend, Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said internal enquiries were under way, although he declined to give details.
Malaysia's opposition coalition has demanded a parliamentary inquiry into what happened on the ground in those first few hours.
Government officials have said any formal inquiry should not begin until the flight's black box recorders are found.
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