SOME family members of MH370 victims are split over the idea of an international inquiry into the disappearance of the Beijing-bound flight in 2014.

The idea was mooted by DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang on Wednesday after former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott said Malaysian authorities believed the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines plane was a case of the pilot’s murder-suicide.

Lim said an international inquiry commission is necessary to uncover the truth.

Intan Maizura Othman, wife of steward Mohd Hazrin Hasnan, asked if Lim is earnest or “saying it for the sake of saying it.” 

“I don’t like him saying it just for the sake of it. We are approaching March 8 (anniversary)… and he is just saying it for nothing,” she told The Malaysian Insight.

MH370 vanished with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014. It diverted from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route, turning back before Vietnamese airspace.

Its last-known trajectory was towards the Southern Indian Ocean after making a turn-around northern Sumatra.

Abbott’s claim, made in a Sky News Australia documentary, suggests that the Malaysian government then was hiding the facts, Lim said.

Intan refused to comment on Abbott’s claims of a possible murder-suicide by MH370 pilot captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. 

She said if such a commission is set up, it should be a genuine effort.

“If Lim is proposing it and suggesting it for the government to reopen the case and to really look into this and doing it sincerely, then why not.

“The effort to set up a commission and the people in it should be genuine, if not, what is the point?”

Another next-of-kin, Selamat Omar, the father of passenger Mohd Khairul Amri, welcomed the idea of an inquiry. 

“I agree with Lim Kit Siang. I welcome the idea for an inquiry commission to be set up because we have been waiting for a long time for development on MH370,” he said.

If such a commission is to be set up, it should involve both the Malaysian and Australian governments, Selamat added.

“The one who claimed the news (of a possible murder-suicide by the pilot) was the Australian government, not Malaysia.

“Hence, they (Australia) should be called to verify the veracity of the information.”

Selamat also questioned the timing of Abbott’s revelation.

“It has been a long time since the incident. Why is it only coming out now?”

However, he dismissed the theory of a murder-suicide engineered by Zaharie, saying that the pilot was a Muslim and a family man. 

“It doesn’t make sense if he wanted to kill himself.”

The murder-suicide theory was floated in the early days of the investigation following MH370’s disappearance and has surfaced repeatedly over the years in the absence of conclusive findings on its fate.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) final report on the investigation into the missing plane concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that the pilot or first officer experienced recent relationship problems that made them unfit to fly.

Abbott said: “it was understood at the highest levels that this was almost certainly murder-suicide by the pilot.”

Former prime minister Najib Razak, who was in power during the incident, and Inspector-General of Police Abdul Hamid Bador, both responded to Abbott’s interview saying there was no conclusive proof of pilot suicide. – February 21, 2020.