KUALA LUMPUR, March 20 — Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) pilot now in the centre of investigations on missing Flight MH370, was opposed to extremism and fanaticism, according to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Anwar, who has admitted to knowing the 53-year-old pilot to some degree, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview aired this morning that Zaharie had merely been an ardent supporter of the federal opposition’s cause, which he stressed was about “democratic reform”.
“Certainly he is not,” Anwar said when asked if he believed Zaharie to be a fanatic.
“He supports our multi-racial coalition. He supports democratic reform. He is against any form of extremism,” he said in the interview, which was aired at 3am this morning.
“And we take a very strong position in clamouring for change through constitutional and democratic means.”
As hours turned into days and days into nearly two weeks now, answers to why and how the Boeing 777 wide-body aircraft had gone missing the morning of March 8 have grown even more scant.
Investigators have been relying on what could best be described as piecemeal evidence gathered from data weaned off the defence systems of several nations.
What the authorities finally agreed on — one week after MH370’s disappearance — is that the plane, which had been bound for Beijing from Malaysia’s capital city here, had veered suddenly westwards in mid-flight. The changed flight path had been deliberate, according to Malaysian officials on Saturday.
The revelation sent investigators back to the drawing board as they refocused their probe on the backgrounds of those on board flight MH370 — all 227 passengers and 12 crew members.
And suddenly Zaharie, the veteran MAS pilot who had earlier been described as “passionate” about flying, became a key concern.
Local police searched the homes of Zaharie and that of his co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid last Saturday, taking away the former’s home-built flight simulator for inspection.
Today, local and foreign experts, including those from the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are poring over data installed in the simulator and trying to retrieve whatever information the pilot had deleted.
But this could take days or even weeks, CNN reported this morning.
Anwar, whose link to the pilot suddenly surfaced amid media scrutiny on the latter’s background, confirmed to reporters yesterday that the man was related to his daughter-in-law.
He was asked again to speak on the link by Amanpour and the leader said his daughter-in-law called the MAS pilot “uncle”.
Amanpour, quoting from Anwar’s press secretary, had asked the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) de facto chief to confirm if Zaharie was indeed his “son’s wife’s mother’s father’s brother’s son”.
“What my daughter-in-law told me is that he is a family member, not too close, but she calls him ‘uncle,’ which is quite common here. But I know him... basically as a party activist,” Anwar replied.
He appeared as well to dismiss links between Zaharie and his sodomy II case, in which he had been sentenced to five years in jail just hours before MH370 went missing.
Anwar said that based on what he gathered from the pilot’s colleagues, Zaharie had indeed been “disturbed” by the court’s decision.
But he was quick to add that “many others were disturbed”.
“I mean, we were shocked and appalled by the speed of the process of the court of appeal.”
“But I think that’s quite normal. I don’t think it’s something that would trigger a person of his expertise, calibre, to do any unwanted activity. I am absolutely certain of that,” Anwar said, according to CNN’s report. MALAY MAIL