08-02-2015, 07:25 AM
What we Know
Captain Zaharie Shah, a cousin by marriage of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, had claimed on Facebook that Malaysia's founding prime minister, Dr. Mahatir, was "inordinately wealthy." Captain Shah, long-term employee of a state-owned airline in a country not famous for participatory democracy, posed for a Facebook photo in a t-shirt reading "Democracy is Dead."
The afternoon just before the flight. Captain Shah attended a fast-tracked Court of Appeals hearing on Anwar's sodomy trial. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had been arrested following a public disagreement with Mahatir in the early 1990s over financial policy (Anwar was then Minister of Finance). Anwar was charged with corruption and sodomy. The sodomy conviction was later quashed.
After leaving prison, Anwar taught at Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and other campuses, until he was once again eligible to run for office (there is a 5 or 10 year waiting period after a serious criminal conviction before someone can run for political office in Malaysia).
Anwar ran and won. He was soon arrested for allegedly raping an assistant (at the time, Anwar was about 60 and the assistant about 20) in a hotel room. The trial court found him not guilty, but the Court of Appeals, as I just mentioned, moved up his trial ahead of mid-term elections and in a one-hour hearing reversed the decision of the lower court, found him guilty of sodomy and sentenced him to five years in prison. Captain Shah was present as Anwar, again, his cousin by marriage and also his political hero, was led away in handcuffs.
By virtue of the conviction, Anwar once again could not run for office or hold office.
Later that evening, Anwar was released (he is in prison now), but Captain Shah left the courtroom after seeing Anwar taken away.
Captain Shah went home to his suburban house where he lived with his ex-wife, some of his adult children and some of his grandchildren.
Captain Shah then either told them to get out or they told him they were leaving. Alternately, he learned that they had already left. As he headed to the airport, he called his girlfriend and they argued. While the details are sketchy, we know he was having family and romantic problems.
An hour after departure, Shah acknowledged a hand-off to Vietnamese controllers. The transponder then shut down and the plane, according to some reports, hugged the terrain in some places flying west along the Malaysian-Thai border, a region of jungles and low mountains.
The evidence suggests Shah flew past Penang and out into the Andaman Sea before possibly turning south between Sumatra and India. The rest of his route to the southern Indian Ocean would have been over water and not detectable by most land-based radar.
Regime Change?
I believe two scenarios are possible. Shah was furious about Anwar and devastated by his family situation. He took the plane for a long trip to nowhere.
Another possibility is that he called KL departure, asked to be patched into the PM's office and demanded, for example, that the PM step down and that Anwar be freed.
About a day or two (maybe three) after MH370's disappearance, some news sources reported that the Malaysian PM would be stepping down. This of course has no occurred.
Missing Evidence
Many passengers keep their cell phones on in flight and these phones are constantly attempting to log into cell towers. There has been no discussion in the media about attempting to track the plane more precisely based on cell tower registrations.
Australia and China have long-distance radar that could have detected MH370 however it was "off" that night in both countries.
Other surrounding nations have mostly remained silent about tracking the plane on military radar.
Globe orbitting satellites could have picked up an image of the plane or its contrail, particularly at dawn if it were still flying.
So What Happened?
I believe that Captain Zaharie Shah was angry about his hero's fate and distressed about his personal life. He may have demanded a change in regime and dumped the plane in the Indian Ocean as far away from shipping channels as he could get and easing the plane into the water hoping it would go down in one piece.
I believe that Captain Shah wanted to destroy Malaysian Airlines, bring discredit on Malaysia, create an international crisis with China (most passengers were Chinese) and otherwise give a kick in the butt to a regime he despised.
Or, he may simply have been at the end of his rope, crazy and ditched the plane.
No government in the world will tolerate regime change. Nor could the Malaysian government afford to admit that it had refused to negotiate with a pilot who then went and crashed his plane.
Josh Wallace (comcomtech)
Captain Zaharie Shah, a cousin by marriage of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, had claimed on Facebook that Malaysia's founding prime minister, Dr. Mahatir, was "inordinately wealthy." Captain Shah, long-term employee of a state-owned airline in a country not famous for participatory democracy, posed for a Facebook photo in a t-shirt reading "Democracy is Dead."
The afternoon just before the flight. Captain Shah attended a fast-tracked Court of Appeals hearing on Anwar's sodomy trial. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had been arrested following a public disagreement with Mahatir in the early 1990s over financial policy (Anwar was then Minister of Finance). Anwar was charged with corruption and sodomy. The sodomy conviction was later quashed.
After leaving prison, Anwar taught at Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and other campuses, until he was once again eligible to run for office (there is a 5 or 10 year waiting period after a serious criminal conviction before someone can run for political office in Malaysia).
Anwar ran and won. He was soon arrested for allegedly raping an assistant (at the time, Anwar was about 60 and the assistant about 20) in a hotel room. The trial court found him not guilty, but the Court of Appeals, as I just mentioned, moved up his trial ahead of mid-term elections and in a one-hour hearing reversed the decision of the lower court, found him guilty of sodomy and sentenced him to five years in prison. Captain Shah was present as Anwar, again, his cousin by marriage and also his political hero, was led away in handcuffs.
By virtue of the conviction, Anwar once again could not run for office or hold office.
Later that evening, Anwar was released (he is in prison now), but Captain Shah left the courtroom after seeing Anwar taken away.
Captain Shah went home to his suburban house where he lived with his ex-wife, some of his adult children and some of his grandchildren.
Captain Shah then either told them to get out or they told him they were leaving. Alternately, he learned that they had already left. As he headed to the airport, he called his girlfriend and they argued. While the details are sketchy, we know he was having family and romantic problems.
An hour after departure, Shah acknowledged a hand-off to Vietnamese controllers. The transponder then shut down and the plane, according to some reports, hugged the terrain in some places flying west along the Malaysian-Thai border, a region of jungles and low mountains.
The evidence suggests Shah flew past Penang and out into the Andaman Sea before possibly turning south between Sumatra and India. The rest of his route to the southern Indian Ocean would have been over water and not detectable by most land-based radar.
Regime Change?
I believe two scenarios are possible. Shah was furious about Anwar and devastated by his family situation. He took the plane for a long trip to nowhere.
Another possibility is that he called KL departure, asked to be patched into the PM's office and demanded, for example, that the PM step down and that Anwar be freed.
About a day or two (maybe three) after MH370's disappearance, some news sources reported that the Malaysian PM would be stepping down. This of course has no occurred.
Missing Evidence
Many passengers keep their cell phones on in flight and these phones are constantly attempting to log into cell towers. There has been no discussion in the media about attempting to track the plane more precisely based on cell tower registrations.
Australia and China have long-distance radar that could have detected MH370 however it was "off" that night in both countries.
Other surrounding nations have mostly remained silent about tracking the plane on military radar.
Globe orbitting satellites could have picked up an image of the plane or its contrail, particularly at dawn if it were still flying.
So What Happened?
I believe that Captain Zaharie Shah was angry about his hero's fate and distressed about his personal life. He may have demanded a change in regime and dumped the plane in the Indian Ocean as far away from shipping channels as he could get and easing the plane into the water hoping it would go down in one piece.
I believe that Captain Shah wanted to destroy Malaysian Airlines, bring discredit on Malaysia, create an international crisis with China (most passengers were Chinese) and otherwise give a kick in the butt to a regime he despised.
Or, he may simply have been at the end of his rope, crazy and ditched the plane.
No government in the world will tolerate regime change. Nor could the Malaysian government afford to admit that it had refused to negotiate with a pilot who then went and crashed his plane.
Josh Wallace (comcomtech)