ISKANDAR Salleh was only five when he was told that his father, former Sabah finance minister Salleh Sulong, had died in an airplane accident.

But little did he know then that the trauma of losing a loved one would stretch into a 41-year-long emotional and psychological ordeal in his search to find the truth behind the tragic incident, which claimed 11 lives.

Shortly after the June 6, 1976 crash, results of investigations by both Malaysian and Australian authorities were quickly classified as state secret and placed under the Official Secrets Act.

Since then, Iskandar and many others have attempted to unlock these secrets.

Their latest effort once again reached a roadblock earlier this week when DAP’s Kepayan assemblyman Dr Edwin Bose tried in the state legislative to get current Chief Minister Musa Aman to give an explanation on the “mystery of the tragedy”.

Musa’s short answer was that the case is still classified as a secret and the “Sabah Civil Aviation Department has no new information on the crash”.

“Well, it’s just another setback,” Iskandar said to The Malaysian Insight in response to Musa’s reply.

Fatal accident

Salleh, along with former chief minister Fuad Stephens, minister of local government and housing Peter Mojuntin, works and communication minister Chong Thien Vun and several other top government officials were flying from the island of Labuan back to Kota Kinabalu on that fateful day when their plane nosedived and crashed into Sembulan Bay.

The aircraft, a twin-engined turboprop GAF Nomad aircraft, was built by the Australian Government Aircraft Factories (GAF) in Melbourne.

All 11 passengers, who also included Stephen’s eldest son Johari, did not survive the crash, which was dubbed the “Double Six Tragedy” in reference to the date of the accident.

But even as family of the victims grappled with the sudden loss of their loved ones, investigations and findings into the crash were quickly classified as state secret.

Investigation findings, which also included a report by a team of Australian investigators, were locked away, along with the hopes of the victims’ family of ever finding out the reason for the crash.

“I just want to know the truth,” Iskandar, now 46, told The Malaysian Insight recently in a telephone interview.

“I am the (only) son, and lost my dad at a young age. Please let me have closure… please. That’s all I ask for. I just want to know the truth.”

Refusing to accept the tight lid of secrecy clamped over the events surrounding his father’s death, Iskandar travelled to Australia in 2014, hoping to dig into the Australian archive for answers.

However, he was told he could not access the 44-page Australian findings due to a “Commonwealth law governing secrecy” between member countries.

He was told that he could only access the findings after Malaysia had declassified its findings.

Veil of secrecy

The government’s action to keep the plane crash investigation results a secret spewed many conspiracy theories, further fuelled by an Australian newspaper report which said the crash “smelt of foul play”.

One of the theories was that Stephens was killed because he refused to concede Sabah’s oil and gas to the federal government.

Stephens and his entourage were in Labuan reportedly for “a high-level meeting” to discuss the issue of oil royalties with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, then the federal finance minister and chairman of Petronas.

The meeting was held because Stephen’s predecessor Mustapha Harun had refused to sign away Sabah’s oil in return for the paltry 5% royalty offered by the federal government.

After investigations by the Malaysian team were completed, a statement issued by the then deputy communication minister Mohd Ali M Sharif announced that the crash was due to “human error”.

“The findings of an investigating team did not reveal any technical errors or sabotage as being the causes of the air crash.

“What they have instead discovered is that the fault was due to human error. It was also revealed that the aircraft’s storage space at the back of the aircraft was loaded with goods above the maximum load.

“As a consequence, this had resulted in the aircraft losing control when it attempted to land at the Kota Kinabalu Airport, thus resulting in the accident.”

The Australian government did likewise with its findings, locking it away as “classified” in the government archive.

But as hard as the government tries to keep the crash of 1976 forgotten, a small group of family and friends of the crash victims mark the tragedy with a yearly gathering. A monument, called the Double Six monument, was also built near the crash site just outside Kota Kinablu.

And despite of all the roadblocks, Iskandar said he is not giving up.

“I’m still clinging on to hope.

“I want to know. My family want to know. They (the surviving kin) all want to know. We need the closure.” – April 13, 2017.