Malaysia has been forced on the defensive again over its handling of the three-week search for missing flight MH370 after Interpol hit out at a minister for suggesting that the international police agency’s database for stolen and lost passports was too slow for use by Malaysian authorities.
The issue of stolen passports surfaced in the first few days after the disappearance of flight MH370 with 239 people on board, when Interpol confirmed that two passengers had boarded the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, using stolen passports.
Interpol questioned at the time why “only a handful of countries” made use of the Interpol database to check whether people boarding international flights were using stolen passports.