Two passengers on Malaysia plane had stolen EU passports
(AFP) - 11 minutes ago
Rome -- Two passengers on a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft that
went missing in Asia with 239 people on board appeared to have been
travelling on stolen EU passports, it emerged Saturday.
An Austrian, named in reports as Christian Kozel, 30, had his passport
pinched in Thailand in 2012, while Italian Luigi Maraldi, 37, had his
stolen last year, also in Thailand, officials and sources said.
Despite their names being on the passenger manifest, neither man was
on flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it went missing
without sending a distress signal early on Saturday somewhere between
Malaysia's east coast and southern Vietnam.
Maraldi phoned from Thailand to his family in Cesena in northeastern
Italy after seeing on the news that he was listed as being on the
vanished airliner, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
Austrian authorities tracked down Kozel after being told by the
airline he was on the passenger list. He is "safe and sound" in
Austria, Martin Weiss, a spokesman for the Austrian foreign ministry
told AFP.
Weiss declined to comment on whether Vienna had been contacted by
intelligence services for more information.
"At this point we have just looked at this from a consular point of
view, on whether an Austrian is among the possible victims," Weiss
said.
"Anything else that comes now is for the security organisations of
this world if they want to look at this from a different angle ... We
could not comment on this."
In Washington, a US administration official said authorities were
aware of the reporting of the two stolen passports.
"We have not determined a nexus to terrorism yet, although it's still
very early and that's by no means definitive. We're still tracking the
situation," the official said.
Maraldi had managed to phone his father and reassure him he was safe
before his family saw the news back home in Italy.
"I turned on (rolling television news channel) RAI News24 and I saw
what had happened. Thankfully, everything is okay. Luigi is on
holiday, he's coming home in three weeks," the father told Ansa.
Last to know were the police officers who knocked on the door of the
Maraldi family home in Cesena in north-eastern Italy, fully expecting
to impart some tragic news.
"We were prepared for the worst. It's never nice to have to go and
tell people something like this," police inspector Paolo Campana told
ANSA.
No trace had been found of the Boeing 777-200 by nightfall Saturday
but Vietnam said its search planes spotted large oil slicks in the
sea, in the first hint at its possible fate.
Copyright (c) 2014 AFP. All rights reserved.
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SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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