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Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (pic) has claimed that the cargo manifest for Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 had been deleted by “people in authority” as part of efforts to conceal information on the plane’s disappearance.
In an interview by Caro Meldrum-Hanna for the Australian Broadcasting Corp’s Four Corners programme yesterday, Anwar said his sources told him that the manifest had been deleted.
“I could not verify that, the only reasonable action I could take was to raise specific questions and demand the cargo manifest,” he said, adding that the matter had even been raised in Parliament but there was no response from the authorities.
“Even if it is deleted or not, the government must come (out and explain) in a transparent manner. You can’t expect the internatiomal community to have this huge search and rescue operation to find the debris. We have to know what is the cargo on the flight.”
Pressed by Meldrum-Hanna if his contact in MAS had actually seen the cargo manifest, Anwar said he wouldn’t know but people volunteer information to him in the strictest confidence as they were afraid of repercussions.
Asked why the government would conceal so much information, Anwar said: “The only plausible reason I could give is that either they want to conceal evidence in order to deflect (something) or (they are) fearful the infomation will cause further embarrassment.
“To my mind, it is not acceptable, you are talking about lives and national security.”
MAS had previously revealed that the cargo on board flight MH370 included 4 tonnes of mangosteen and lithium ion batteries.
Anwar was also asked about the failure of Malaysia’s military to respond when it had picked up flight MH370 on its radar.
“Yeah, I mean it’s a major scandal here, because this is of course amounting to a major threat to national security,” he said.
He said the military had breached the standard operating procedures.
“The Air Force will be alerted and will have to then be flown to that area to either, you know, normally to guide the plane to land or to leave the Malaysian airspace.
“They’re standard operating procedure and this was never done.”
Four Corners also quoted former first admiral of the Malaysian Navy, Imran Abdul Hamid, as saying that the military should have reacted to the plane passing over the peninsula.
“They should be responsible for what they are doing.
“They have to answer to the people of Malaysia for failing to react. So, the Chief of Defence Forces has to answer for it, the Chief of Air Forces has to answer for it.
“If they cannot answer it, I think they should leave the service for other people to serve the country,” he said.
Anwar said clearly there was no defence over the radar issue.
MH370 had flown almost directly over the top of Malaysia’s military radar station located on the island of Penang.
Four Corners said that a team of up to five officers could or should have been on duty at the nearby radar operations centre at Butterworth airbase.
Their job? To man the military radar screens, looking for unidentified aircraft entering Malaysia’s airspace.
In defending the Malaysian military in another interview with Four Corners, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein had said that the military had been told to keep an eye on the plane but had allowed it to disappear off their radar after considering it as non-hostile.
This was the first time that Malaysia had said that civil aviation authorities told the military to keep an eye on the aircraft – a fact which was not mentioned in the five-page preliminary report on the plane’s disappearance released by the Ministry of Transport on May 1.
The much-criticised preliminary report had made no mention of the instructions from the civil aviation authorities to the military to monitor the plane.
Instead, the brief report, which had been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), revealed a chaotic four hours after communications between Malaysia air traffic controllers, the flag carrier and other regional air traffic controllers before a hunt was initiated.
Hishammuddin, who appeared defensive in the interview, said that the military did not send a plane up to investigate the aircraft shown on their radar as “it was not deemed a hostile object and pointless if you are not going to shoot it down”.
He was defending the military's failure to scramble a fighter jet after flight MH370 had disappeared from civilian radar on March 8 when its transponder stopped transmitting during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing around 1.21am.
The military radar had tracked it after it made a turn-back and turned in a westerly direction across the peninsula.
“If you’re not going to shoot it down, what’s the point of sending it (a fighter) up?” Hishammuddin was quoted as asking on the Four Corners programme.
Delays in pinpointing the Boeing 777-200's location led to days of searching in the South China Sea before analysis from British satellite firm, Inmarsat, pointed its likely course as the Indian Ocean.
Hishammuddin had also said that had the jet been shot down with 239 passengers and crew on board, “I’d be in a worse position, probably”.
He said he was informed of the military radar detection two hours later and relayed it to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who then ordered a search in the Malacca Strait.
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