False News/Two-Minute Phone Call

MH370 DECODED
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Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, Pilot-in-Command of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
did Not receive a phone call shortly before take-off.

Zaharie did not make a phone call minutes before take-off. He did not receive a phone call shortly before take-off.

There was no phone call. The phone call, which never happened, could not have lasted for two minutes.

The calling person did not exist. This non-existent person could not, therefore, have used a false identity to purchase a pay-as-you-go SIM card.

There was never a phone call made using a SIM card that was never purchased by a woman who does not exist. Nor could this non-existent person be a political activist. And since Captain Shah did not receive a phone call from this non-existent female political activist minutes before take-off how could he maintain a two-minute long conversation?

Why does this matter?

It matters because a British tabloid created this story and published it to infer that the Captain of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was somehow involved in something that never happened. The story was embellished as it was republished, then circulated world-wide, and is now part of the myths that surround MH370.

But it was false news. Fabricated. Imaginative, creative, devious, misleading, dangerous, designed to capture headline space, intended to momentarily fill an information void, but had long-lasting consequences.

Where did the story originate?

Apparently from a British tabloid known as The Sun. Another tabloid, the Daily Mail and a few others re-published the very original version and attributed it to The Sun.

But the problem is, that version, if it ever existed, cannot now be found. Even The Sun which has five pages of indexed articles related to MH370 does not link it. Attempts to find it using different search engines, using various key words, or limiting the results to an appropriate date range were not successful. Nor was a search through the Internet Archive. It's gone.

The Daily Mail simply wrote that the pilot made a mystery phone call just before MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur. No duration was stated. Just that investigators were urgently trying to work out who the Captain spoke to.

That was too brief to be newsworthy and only a few other media outlets mentioned it.

How did the story develop?

The Daily Mail turned the story around so that the pilot received a phone call. There had to be a caller, but to create drama the Police couldn't know who it was. So they invented the story of a false identity and a pay-as-you-go SIM card. But the caller would need a motive. So it was mentioned that political activists in Malaysia use pay-as-you-go SIM cards obtained using false information.

It is true that Zaharie Shah had been politically active, was a supporter of the Opposition Leader, and critical of the Najib government. Nothing wrong with that; many Malaysians probably felt the same way. But we now know that flight MH370 was diverted and ended in the southern Indian Ocean. The story was created to generate a motive for the diversion. Use of words like 'fanatical' in a headline, 'mystery' in a sub-title, 'mysterious' within the article, conveys a sense of drama and intrigue. People are interested. It captured attention. The story became newsworthy, and it was repeated. Often. In many countries.

The Malaysian Police dismissed the story as 'mere speculation'

Ironically, many media outlets which published the story also published the comments made by the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar who dismissed the report and asked the newspaper to provide the telephone number which would be "helpful". "If not, it is mere speculation," Khalid was quoted as saying in the Sydney Morning Herald.

But it was not enough.

The Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) was conducting a criminal investigation into a missing Boeing 777 with 227 passengers and 12 crew onboard. Serious business. The only information relevant to the PDRM was that which is verifiable, collected through official channels and from reliable sources. The Police warned about information which originated from "unnamed and unverified sources".

Some Facts

  • When Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing the Royal Malaysia police (PDRM) opened a Criminal Investigation
  • The police (PDRM) requested assistance from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC)
  • The police (PDRM) and MCMC obtained mobile phone records, internet traffic data, social media records and any other online or communications-related data for both the Pilots and each of the Cabin Crew of MH370. This data was analysed by the MCMC.
  • Captain Shah's mobile phone number was 019-NNNN948, registered with Malaysian telco Celcom. Celcom provided the call logs for Zaharie's phone (and others).
  • The MCMC reported a summary of key phone calls to or from the Pilots - Zaharie's call log showed, for example that at 9:49 am on 2 February 2014 he received a call from an aircraft engineer employed by Malaysia Airlines. The call duration was 45 minutes.
    This summary did not mention any call either to or from Zaharie's mobile phone shortly before departure.
  • The MCMC analysis included diagrams of all incoming calls made to Zaharie's number and all outgoing calls, showing the number of calls made and the identity of each caller or recipient.
    All calls were identified. There was no call to or from an unidentifed number.
  • All mobile calls for the pilots and each member of the cabin crew were also plotted on a time-line. This showed that Zaharie's last outbound phone call was made at 10:31:36 pm 7 March 2014 - to his wife.
    The timeline does not show any inbound calls to Zaharie prior to departure. After 10:30 pm the only phone activity noted was when Zaharie checked his email account and WeChat.

No Evidence of a 'Two-Minute Call'

There is no evidence in any of these records and associated documents of any call made either to or from Captain Shah's mobile phone which matches any of the claims made in the articles published by The Sun, the Daily Mail or any other media which republished the article content.

All callers or recipients were identified. There was no call related to or from a SIM card purchased with a false identity.

There was no call 'shortly before' or 'minutes before' take-off. There was no mystery woman caller.

The Royal Malaysia Police were absolutely correct when they dismissed the article as 'mere speculation'.

The story is deliberately false. Totally fabricated.

Grant




What now?

Good question! It shows that among all of the articles written about MH370 there are some that are just plain wrong. Sometimes people got things wrong and corrected it. That's how we get closer to the truth. But sometimes the message was deliberately wrong, false and intended to mislead. Like this story. We need to distinguish between mis-information and dis-information. Both are wrong, but mis- is unintentional and dis- is deliberate, calculated and dangerous.

What else did the media in 2014 publish about the flight, the pilots, cabin crew and passengers, their personal lives or families that should never have been printed?

What has been written since then in books about MH370, stated in interviews and presented in documentaries which may seem plausible, believable because it's from an expert, or convincing because of the sincerity behind it, but which is not evidence-based, is not verifiable, or cannot be proven?

Even worse, with AI-trained search engines providing content which seems plausible, in future it will become even more difficult to identify the truth.