A shadowy Iranian businessman known only as “Mr. Ali” emerged Monday as a key figure in the deepening mystery surrounding the Malaysian airliner that vanished in midflight over the South China Sea.
Three days after the Boeing 777 disappeared from radar screens — with no conclusive signs of wreckage or victims — authorities questioned travel agents in Thailand about the two men who used stolen passports to board Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
An owner of the Grand Horizon travel agency in the resort town of Pattaya said she booked the men’s tickets at the request of an Iranian middleman, whom she knew only as “Mr. Ali.”
Benjaporn Krutnait described the mystery man as a regular customer she has dealt with for the past three years, and told the Financial Times he had a friend pay cash for the tickets after ordering them Thursday.
“Mr. Ali” couldn’t be reached through a Tehran cellphone number provided by Krutnait.
Thai police officials identified him as Kazem Ali, according to CNN. But police Lt. Col. Ratchthapong Tia-sood insisted that could not be certain.
“We have to look further into this Mr. Ali’s identity because it’s almost a tradition to use an alias when doing business around here,” he said.
The investigation into Saturday’s disappearance of the jet — which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members — is now focused on the two men who boarded with stolen passports.
Several would-be terrorists have been busted trying to fly out of the Kuala Lumpur airport where the Beijing-bound plane took off, a source said.
“We have stopped men with false or stolen passports, and carrying explosives, who have tried to get past . . . security and get on a plane,” the source told Reuters.
“There have been two or three incidents, but I will not divulge the details.”
Malaysian authorities also said Monday that five passengers who checked in for the flight never boarded the plane and that their luggage was removed.
The head of Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, refused to confirm reports that one of the men with the stolen passports had been identified, but he said both were of “non-Asian” appearance and one was black.
In describing the black man, Rahman likened his appearance to that of Mario Balotelli, a dark-skinned Italian soccer star whose parents are from Ghana.
Those remarks marked a reversal of an earlier statement by Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who on Sunday said surveillance video showed both men had “Asian faces.”
At the time, Hamidi blasted border officials for not stopping the men when they presented the passports, which had been issued in Italy and Austria.
Rahman said authorities were looking into whether the men — who carried passports reported stolen in Thailand during the past two years — were tied to a syndicate trafficking in pilfered travel documents.
The two men were identified as Iranian nationals in a BBC Persian report.
An Iranian friend of one of the men told BBC Persian that the pair was attempting to migrate to Europe, where they intended to seek asylum.
The friend, who said he knew one of the two fliers from their school days, explained that his pal had bought the stolen passports to get to Germany, where his mom lives. The other, he said, wanted to travel to Denmark.
A expert on Asian smuggling told London’s Times News Service that Kuala Lumpur was one of several hubs for illegal immigration, and that Beijing may have been part of the route because it recently granted visa exemptions for passengers who are only passing through its airport.
Rahman called the disappearance of Flight MH370 an “unprecedented mystery” and said searchers would expand the 50-mile-radius in the Gulf of Thailand that dozens of ships and planes from 10 countries have been scouring.
Early Tuesday, the focus of the search shifted to the waters off the western coast of Malaysia. Authorities, however, said search teams would continue looking in both areas.
In addition, the Vietnamese military said it would be searching by land all the way up to the Cambodian border.
Meanwhile, early Tuesday, a pilot from Hong Kong spotted “large solid debris” while flying over the Vietnamese waters, according to CNN. It was not clear if the debris was part of the 777.
“As far as we are concerned, we have to find the aircraft,” Rahman said. “We have to find a piece of the aircraft, if possible.”
Two sources involved in the investigation told Reuters the missing plane never made contact with an automatic flight data-monitoring system after it vanished from radar screens.
Flight MH370 was equipped with a computer that is part of the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which gathers information including flight speed and fuel consumption.
The data help mechanics prepare for repairs on the ground and have also been used in crash investigations.
“There were no signals from ACARS from the time the aircraft disappeared,” a source told Reuters.
In addition to ACARS, airlines can use a real-time troubleshooting system sold by Boeing called Airplane Health Management, but that optional equipment was not installed on Flight MH370, Reuters said.