Add CategorySTALKING, death threats and assassination are preventing one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries — what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 — from being solved, according to wreck hunter Blaine Gibson.
Gibson, a self-styled investigator who has been described as an “Indiana Jones crusader”, has been credited with discovering over two dozen pieces of the doomed plane.
The US lawyer and blogger called off his one-man mission in March last year.
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But with the latest search for the missing plane scheduled to conclude tomorrow, Gibson has claimed criminal methods are being employed to prevent more MH370 debris being handed to authorities, effectively stifling the four-year search.
In an interview with The West Australian, Gibson, who is said to have found more than half of the debris that has been discovered of the ill-fated jet, said his own search was subjected to intimidation, stalking, death threats, defamation and assassination.
“For whatever reasons, some people are very upset that I and other private citizens are finding pieces of the plane,” he told the newspaper.
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Gibson alleged those illegal acts included the murder of Houssenaly Zahid Raza, the Honorary Malaysian Consul in Madagascar, last year. Raza was gunned down in the centre of the island nation’s capital Antananarivo in an apparent assassination on August 24.
Raza had been due to deliver new MH370 items to Malaysian investigators in Kuala Lumpur when he was unexpectedly slain. One of those pieces was said to be the baseplate of an aerodynamic fin, from the top of a Boeing engine that would not normally come off.
“It should not have broken away and, according to aerodynamic experts, this could only happen in an extreme event,” Gibson told The West Australian.
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Gibson also claimed authorities were dawdling on a report on personal effects of passengers on MH370 he had found.
As US search company Ocean Infinity wraps up its search in the southern Indian Ocean, Gibson called for the Malaysian government to offer a reward to locals for debris found in the Indian Ocean.
“This should have been done a long time ago,” Gibson said.
“There is so much more out there and pieces I have handed in to local authorities have not been collected by the Malaysians. A reward would galvanise many villagers to collect pieces that are just lying on beaches. Some of these could be critical to the investigation.”
MH370 SEARCH NEARS AN END
Ocean Infinity announced in January its proposal to continue the abandoned search for MH370 on a “no find no fee” basis had been accepted by the Malaysian government.
The 90 day search began with much optimism with Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Plunkett declaring: “Whilst there can be no guarantees of locating the aircraft, we believe our system of multiple autonomous vehicles working simultaneously is well suited to the task at hand. I wish our team the best of luck in their endeavours and sincerely hope that we will be able to play a part in providing some answers to the many people affected by this tragedy.”
But no such answers again look to be forthcoming.
Ocean Infinity’s vessel Seabed Constructor began its search on January 22, with plans to use eight Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in the operation.
The company has continued to provide regular updates on the search on its website but its last “weekly” report released on May 15 was short on information.
The search needs to conclude by the end of the month due to adverse winter weather conditions that affect visibility.
On the same day their last report was released, a senior aviation figure said it was time the Australian Transport Safety Bureau abandoned its version of events surrounding the disappearance of MH370.
Captain Mike Keane, a former chief pilot of Britain’s largest airline easyJet, claims the ATSB is complicit in a crime if it sticks to its “ghost flight” theory that the Boeing 777 was on autopilot when the pilots were incapacitated at the end of the flight when it crashed.
The mysterious route taken by the doomed flight before the plane vanished with 239 passengers on board on March 8, 2014, has been re-examined by several aviation experts who all claim to have made chilling new discoveries.
For more than four years the world has grappled with questions over how the airliner vanished into thin air en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
Experts believe MH370 was used in a murder-suicide mission by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
Captain Keane, who was born in New Zealand and was a fighter pilot and intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force, told The Australian the ATSB should now publicly admit the captain hijacked his own aircraft, flew it until it crashed and abandoned it outside the bureau’s search area so it could not be found.