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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Stolen passports, ticket buyer traced in Malaysia Airlines mystery

Thanyarat Doksone And Jim Gomez Associated Press

PATTAYA, Thailand – There was still no trace of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane today, a day after authorities questioned travel agents at a beach resort in Thailand about two men who boarded the flight with stolen passports, part of a growing international investigation. The plane with 239 people on board vanished from radar screens between Malaysia and Vietnam early Saturday.

Five passengers who checked in for flight MH370 didn’t board the plane, and their luggage was removed from it, Malaysian authorities said. Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said this also was being investigated, but he didn’t say whether this was suspicious.

Two of the passengers were traveling on passports stolen in Thailand and had onward tickets to Europe, but it’s not known whether the two men had anything to do with the plane’s disappearance. Criminals and illegal migrants regularly travel on fake or stolen documents.

Hussein said biometric information and CCTV footage of the men has been shared with Chinese and U.S. intelligence agencies, which were helping with the investigation. Almost two-thirds of the passengers on the flight were from China.

The stolen passports, one belonging to Christian Kozel of Austria and the other to Luigi Maraldi of Italy, were entered into Interpol’s database after they were taken in Thailand in 2012 and 2013, the police organization said.

Electronic booking records show that one-way tickets with those names were issued Thursday from a travel agency in the beach resort of Pattaya in eastern Thailand. Thai police Col. Supachai Phuykaeokam said those reservations were placed with the agency by a second travel agency in Pattaya, Grand Horizon.

Thai police and Interpol officers questioned the owners.

Police Lt. Col. Ratchthapong Tia-sood said the travel agency was contacted by an Iranian man known only as “Mr. Ali” to book the tickets for the two men.

The travel agency’s owner, Benjaporn Krutnait, told the Financial Times she believed Ali was not connected to terrorism because he had asked for the cheapest tickets to Europe and did not specify the Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight.

Malaysia’s police chief was quoted by local media as saying that one of the two men had been identified – something that could speed up the investigation.

Civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman declined to confirm this, but said they were of “non-Asian” appearance, adding that authorities were looking at the possibility the men were connected to a stolen passport syndicate.