Off the wire
• China Headlines: China signals stronger pro-growth policy stance  • Uganda arrests journalists over coverage of opposition protests  • Myanmar's 1st Huawei information, network academy inaugurated in Yangon  • Iceland's GDP predicted to grow by 4 pct in 2016  • Former NBA player Beasley wins MVP Award in CBA  • "The Revenant" to show at Chinese cinemas  • Chinese men take 2nd win at World Team Table Tennis Championships  • ASEAN Economic Ministers Retreat to be held in Thailand's Chiang Mai  • 7 detained for air pollution in G20 host city  • Problems mount up for Zidane as crisis hit Madrid preparing to face Levante  
You are here: 　 Home

Link between Anwar Ibrahim, MH370 pilot coincidental: daughter

Xinhua, February 29, 2016 Adjust font size:

Nurul Izzah Anwar, daughter of imprisoned Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim, emphasized in an exclusive interview that her father's relationship with missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was coincidental.

"The problem we have is we have no way of knowing what the government has done to investigate, to find the actual causes for the crash," she told Xinhua days before the second anniversary of flight MH370's disappearance on March 8, 2014.

She said that one of Anwar's sons-in-law, married to her sister, is a Malaysia Airlines pilot which explains why Anwar had met in passing the pilot of the plane flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

At the time, many speculated that the plane had been hijacked by Zaharie to protest against Anwar's upheld conviction to five years in prison on sodomy charges on March 7, 2014.

Much attention has been drawn to the link between Anwar, leading figure of the opposition People's Justice Party, and the captain of flight MH370 that went missing the day after Anwar's sentencing.

"I understand the anger because a lot of the families did not get adequate explanation from the event. We were pushing for more disclosure in parliament because it's disastrous," Nurul added.

Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people, including 154 Chinese, on board on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Endit