MH370 passengers using stolen passports identified as Iranians

KUALA LUMPUR — The two passengers travelling with stolen passports on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been identified as Iranians, media reports said.

A BBC Persian report quoted an Iranian friend of one the passengers as saying that he had hosted the pair in Kuala Lumpur after they had arrived from Tehran days before their flight to Beijing.

The friend claimed that the men had bought the fake passports as they wanted to migrate to Europe, said the report.

The pair were travelling on passports belonging to Mr Christian Kozel, a 30-year-old Austrian, and Mr Luigi Maraldi, a 37-year-old Italian.

The Financial Times had reported that the tickets were bought by an Iranian in the Thai resort town of Pattaya.

The Financial Times report had said that a Thai travel agent who booked the tickets for the men said that she had been asked to make the travel arrangements by an Iranian contact.

Travel agent Benjaporn Krutnait, booked the tickets through a business contact whom she only knew as “Mr Ali”. She said that his first request to book cheap tickets to Europe for the two men was made on March 1.

She had told The Financial Times that it was quite common for people to book tickets through middlemen who then retake a commission.

“Mr Ali” had asked for the cheapest route to Europe for his clients and did not mention the specific booking Kuala Lumpur-Beijing, which she claims is unlikely behaviour by would-be terrorists.

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”.

The Financial Times said when “Mr Ali” contacted her again on Thursday, she rebooked the men on the Malaysia Airlines flight through Beijing because it was the cheapest available.

A friend of “Mr Ali” paid Ms Benjaporn cash for the tickets, the paper reported, adding that there is no evidence that “Mr Ali” knew the two men were travelling on stolen passports.

Ms Benjaporn made the bookings through a China Southern Airlines office in Bangkok.

The two passengers were supposed to fly from Beijing to Amsterdam on Saturday. The passenger travelling as “Luigi Maraldi” was to fly on to Copenhagen and “Christian Kozel” to Frankfurt where his mother lives.

Both Malaysia and neighbouring Thailand, where the passports were originally stolen, host large and established Iranian communities.

United States-led sanctions on Iran have plagued the economy and encouraged many young Iranians, who face high unemployment, to seek ways to travel to Europe, North America or Australia — legally or illegally, said a report in The Age.

Investigators in Malaysia are also voicing scepticism that the airliner that disappeared early Saturday with 239 people on board was the target of an attack, US and European government sources close to the probe had said.

Neither Malaysia’s Special Branch, the agency leading the investigation locally, nor spy agencies in the United States and Europe have ruled out the possibility that militants may have been involved in downing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

But Malaysian authorities have indicated that the evidence so far does not strongly back an attack as a cause for the aircraft’s disappearance, and that mechanical or pilot problems could have led to the apparent crash, the US sources said.

“There is no evidence to suggest an act of terror,” said a European security source, who added that there was also “no explanation what’s happened to it or where it is”.

Meanwhile, dozens of ships and aircraft from 10 countries were still scouring the seas around Malaysia and south of Vietnam in search of the B777-200 plane which bears the registration number 9M-MRO. Malaysia Airlines operates 15 B777s. THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER