Previously...
AFP
“MISSING MH370: Thai police target ‘passport ring’ in vanished flight probe”
BANGKOK
SNIPPET: “A senior Thai police official told AFP that authorities were probing a passport racket on the resort island of Phuket, where Maraldi’s passport was stolen.
“A police team combined with local police and immigration are working to track down a passport ring,” southern police commander Panya Mamen said.
A district official in Phuket said that Maraldi had presented himself to police there on Sunday.
“An Italian tourist, Luigi Maraldi, has met southern police commander today in Phuket to say he was not on the plane and his passport had been stolen since last year,” district police lieutenant colonel Akanit Danpitaksart told AFP.
He said they had no information on Kozel’s passport but Austrian foreign ministry spokesman, Martin Weiss, said Sunday that it had been stolen on a flight from Phuket to Bangkok.—AFP”
“Iranian asylum-seeker used stolen passport on Malaysia Airlines flight, police say”
Published March 11, 2014
FoxNews.com
SNIPPET: “Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said Tuesday that the man, whom the BBC identified as 19-year-old Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, was not believed to be a member of a terrorist group. Bakar says Mehrdad was believed to be planning to reach Frankfurt, Germany, and added that that the young man’s mother was waiting for him and had been in contact with the police. Bakar said she contacted Malaysian authorities to inform them of her concern when her son didn’t get in touch with her.
The second passenger using a stolen passport has not been identified.
However, late Monday, the BBC’s Persian service reported that both men who bought the stolen passports were Iranians who planned to use them to migrate to Europe. The report cited a friend of both men who hosted them at his home in Kuala Lumpur as they prepared to travel to Beijing, the final destination of the flight.”
###
###
“Mystery fake-passport holders on flight MH370 were Iranian”
By Arron Merat
10:57PM GMT 10 Mar 2014
SNIPPET: “The two men travelling on stolen passports on the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that mysteriously disappeared on Saturday have been identified as Iranian nationals.
A BBC Persian report quotes an Iranian friend of one of the men, who said he hosted the pair in Kuala Lumpur after they arrived from Tehran in the days preceding their flight to Beijing.
The friend, who knew one of the men from his school days in Iran, said the men had bought the fake passports because they wanted to migrate to Europe.”
SNIPPET: “One of the Iranian nationals’ intended final destination was Frankfurt, where his mother lives, while the other wanted to travel to Denmark.
The same source that spoke to BBC Persian also emailed CNN with a photograph of him posing with his two friends in the days before they embarked on their fateful trip.”