Interpol knew About Stolen Passports Used On Missing Jet

Forty ships and more than 20 airplanes were searching for a missing Malaysia Airlines jet Sunday but by nightfall had not found any wreckage, Malaysian authorities said. Meanwhile, Interpol confirmed that two stolen passports—one Italian, one Austrian—used by passengers on the plane had been entered into the agency’s database following their thefts in Thailand in 2012 and 2013. However, the agency said no checks of those passport numbers were made by any country between the time they were entered into Interpol’s database and the time that Flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur early Saturday.

“Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol’s databases,” the agency’s secretary-general, Ronald K. Noble, said in a written statement. “What is important at the moment is to find out what caused Malaysian Airways Flight 370 to go missing, and in this regard Interpol is making all needed resources available to help relevant authorities in Malaysia and elsewhere find out what happened,” he said, adding that the agency was in contact with officials in Malaysia and elsewhere to “determine the true identities of the passengers who used these stolen passports.”

A patrol ship from the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency discovered a large oil slick in the waters 100 nautical miles from the city of Tok Bali on Sunday, the agency’s director-general said at a news conference. Mohd Amdan Kurish said the ship was ordered to collect samples of the oil to determine if it came from the plane, which vanished Saturday en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard, Malaysia’s state-run Bernama news agency reported.

If the plane did crash into the sea, “obviously we will find clothes, bags and debris that float,” he added. Fishermen working in the area were also going to be interviewed by the agency as part of the search operation. Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, China, the U.S. and other countries were participating in the quest to find the jetliner off southern Vietnam where the Gulf of Thailand meets the South China Sea. Malaysia was deploying submarine rescue vessels, officials said.