As expected the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline have come in from some stick from the family of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the skipper of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.
Mailonline had published a couple of stories, the first said that Captain Zaharie was a political fanatic who was upset that Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s opposition leader had been sent to jail and the second report, not bylined, went further along the same theme.
This time the newspaper quoted a “source close to the pilot’s family” saying that the pilot of the missing flight was in emotional turmoil over the break-up of his marriage.
The second report also published on a Sunday alleged that Zaharie’s wife, Faizah Khanum Mustafa Khan ‘told investigators that Zaharie had stopped speaking to her in the weeks before the flight on March 8, and spent time alone in his room with his flight simulator.’
The Mail on Sunday quoted Aishah as saying that she barely recognised the man who used to dote on her.
“He wasn’t the father I knew. He seemed disturbed and lost in a world of his own,” she is quoted to have said.
I can only hope the journalist has a digital recording of this conversation because, although it is still up in the air what happened to flight MH370, given the total scrutiny this story is getting from millions of people on the net this would not be a time to ham anything up, if ever there was one.
Aishah who studied at Deakin University, Geelong, had this to say on Facebook.
Quote from the Holy Quran
ۚ والفتنة أشد من القتل ۚ
And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing
Dear Dailymail,
You should consider making movies since you are so good at making up stories and scripts out of thin air.
May god have mercy on your souls. You can bet your ass I will not forgive you.
Al Fitnah is worse than killing roughly means what you (disbelievers) are committing is much worse than killing.
Of course this won’t be the first time the Mail has been described as something close to the devil incarnate. I’m sort of glad that I did not get my formal exit clearance from the Immigration authorities here until a week after MH370 went missing.
I spent a lot of time in Malaysia in the 80’s when the government were hanging British and Australian drugs couriers and defending their god given right to do so. One of them Derrick Gregory I made a television documentary on. He had never been abroad before and had spent his childhood in schools for ‘special needs’ kids. He had also suffered serious brain damage – He had the mind of a child and had a conviction for attempting to drive a train away from Charing Cross station.
This was of course mentioned in the British press. I remember the hanging judge being very contemptuous of the British press – Malaysia was going though one of its anti-British phrases and the Prime Minister Mahathir despised the Sunday Times over allegations it had made against him – but I do not think the British press can be blamed for Derrick’s execution.
Now a lot of people are unhappy with Malaysia which acts as if it is a fully developed democracy but falls far short of the mark.
That’s what pissed of Captain Zaharie I suspect – but perhaps not enough to commit suicide over otherwise people in Bangkok would be falling off skyscrapers like lemmings.
There is nothing wrong with being upset that Anwar, leader of the DAP party, has been reconvicted of sodomy on appeal or that Karpal Singh, the chairman of the opposition DAP party and MP, was found guilty of sedition the same week. Karpal is a respected lawyer and questioned the Sultan of Perak's removal of the chief minister in 2009, hardly earth shatterring stuff but enough for conviction.
Two convicts who cannot contest the Selangor elections that the ruling party fear they might lose.
Hardly surprising that the pilot was upset by these convictions, he is not alone.
I rather think the silliest aspect of this story illuminating the status quo in Malaysia is the absurd notion that the country is a democratic state. It isn't and will not be for another 100 years.
Zaharie may have died a hero fighting a cockpit fire and whilst it is understandable to ask a question about the other possibilities this man and his co-pilot have been convicted in the court of public opinion by slur and innuendo for political motives to protect an airline which needs to be questioned about maintenance standards and an arson attack destroying maintenance records for the Boeing aircraft 9M-MRO. What has the Malaysian Government got to hide why it must blame a dead man?