KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 13 — Zaidi Ahmad, who was sacked from the military for exposing weaknesses with indelible ink used in Election 2013, will be called as a witness in the lawsuit filed by two sons whose father was on board Flight MH370.
According to Datuk Dr Arunan Selvaraj, who is representing the two boys in their suit against the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines (MAS), the dismissed major will testify based on his expertise as a former member of the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF).
“I believe it shouldn’t have happened, [the RMAF] should be on alert all the time.
“Heads must roll,” Zaidi told reporters during a press conference at the lawyer’s office here.
Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 last year with 239 people on board, dropping off radar coverage not long after taking off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport en-route to Beijing.
Zaidi, who was found guilty by the military court on January 12 for making unauthorised public statements in his uniform on the faulty indelible ink in May 2013, had been stationed at the RMAF Butterworth airbase that the jumbo jet flew over on the day it disappeared.
He said he agreed to be a witness because he felt it was his responsibility to help the families find answers to the tragedy.
“The most important thing is that this involves the government’s assets and as a Malaysian citizen, I am concerned especially with the readiness of the armed forces as a whole in handling any intrusion into our air space,” he said.
Arunan said they have five witnesses so far, including Zaidi, and the case management will be on February 17 at the KL High Court.
MAS flight MH370, a Boeing 777 jetliner carrying 239 people, disappeared off the coast of Kota Baru, Kelantan, less than an hour after take-off at 12.41am on March 8 and has remained missing ever since.
Early investigations saw search teams concentrating on the waters off Malaysia’s east coast — in the South China Sea and between Malaysia and Vietnam — where the plane was last heard from before it lost contact with the Subang Air Traffic Control (ATC).
But local military radar at the Butterworth airbase later spotted the plane flying westwards, forcing the authorities to redirect their search efforts to the Straits of Malacca.
More information from foreign military and satellite data then confirmed the plane’s location to the west of Malaysia, hundreds of miles away from its original flight path to Beijing.
Questions had been raised over the military’s failure to immediately report the detection of the missing MH370, but deputy defence minister Datuk Abdul Rahim has repeated the Malaysian government’s explanation that the aircraft was considered non-hostile.
Today, Arunan said the suit would be premised on the alleged negligence on the part of the government and the airline.
“The monetary gain is one thing, but our clients also want justice. They want people to be accountable.
“This is one of the ways we can get to know what transpired,” he said.
On January 29, Malaysia officially declared the disappearance of MH370 an “accident” and its passengers and crewmembers deceased, slightly less than 11 months after the ill-fated jetliner’s mysterious disappearance.
The declaration was made by the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) pursuant to International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) Chicago Convention, allowing the family members of the 239 passengers on board to proceed with their claim for damages.
Voice370 — the self-styled support group for families of those on board the missing plane — had said they would not accept such declarations from Putrajaya without physical evidence of the plane’s fate.
