One of the two passengers who used stolen passports to get on board the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 – which has been missing since it disappeared somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam on Friday night – had Copenhagen as his final destination.
According to Interpol, the two stolen passports belonged to a 37-year-old Italian and a 30-year-old Austrian and were reported stolen in Thailand in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
The two travellers were among the 239 passengers flying on Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. From there, he was scheduled to catch a flight to Amsterdam and then to Copenhagen.
Interpol said it was too early to connect the missing plane to the false passports, but said that the airport authorities in Kuala Lumpur had not checked the stolen passports on Interpol’s database.
“Clearly it’s deeply worrying that passengers are able to board an international flight using stolen passports that are registered on Interpol’s database,” Ronald Noble, the secretary-general for Interpol, said at a press conference.
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Too early to rule out terrorism
Interpol has reportedly uncovered the true identity of one of the two passengers and is investigating whether other false passports were used on the flight.
According to CNN, the two travellers probably knew each other because both tickets, which were purchased through China Southern Airlines using Thai baht, had correlating serial numbers.
Investigators have not ruled out the possibility of terrorism in the case of the missing airliner. It could potentially be the most deadly airplane crash since 2001 when 260 people lost their lives when American Airline Flight 587 crashed in Queens, New York.
