Family breaks silence to defend captain of Missing Malaysian flight MH370

The brother-in-law of Zaharie Ahmad Shah, Captain of Malaysian Airline flight MH370, spoke out for the first time publicly in a program by Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) broadcast on Monday night, saying reports about the captain having family problems or hijacking the plane in a political protest are "completely false".

Asuad Khan spoke on behalf of his sister and wife of Captain Zaharie, Faizah Khan, to Four Corners, an ABC program famous in Australia for investigative reports.

"From what I can see, a lot of people are saying a lot of things about him which are untrue," he said.

He said Zaharie and Faizah were having a good relationship before the plane went missing. As for media reports of Faizah taking their children to another house on the day of Zaharie's flight, Khan said it was a normal family routine to live in the house of where their younger son lives when Zaharie has flying duties.

As per the controversial flight simulator in Zaharie's home, Khan and several of Zaharie's friends told Four Corners that was not a secret because Zaharie proudly showed it off on Facebook when he installed it.

Khan also revealed that the simulator had been broken since 2013 which explains why the data of the simulator has been deleted.

Khan said his sister told him that Zaharie had not touched the simulator this year except for trying to reinstall the system. He dismissed the speculations that Zaharie had been using the simulator to practice emergency landing.

He also denied reports that Zaharie, an avid supporter of the opposition party, went to hear the trial of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's trial the day before the flight.

Some reports suggested that Zaharie he had been radicalised and had hijacked the plane in an act of political protest. "No. I ask my sister personally, even, even my sister herself informed him on what happened on that day," Khan said.

The program has suggested that a number of Malaysian civil aviation authorities failed to respond adequately to the missing of MH370 especially at the first few hours after the aircraft's transponder was turned off or failed.

It also revealed that a team of up to five Malaysian military officers could or should have been on duty at the nearby radar operations center at Butterworth air base when MH370 flew across Malaysian airspace as an unidentified object.

"Multiple Malaysian authorities watched the Malaysian Airline flight MH370 go missing, but no one takes responsibility of it," the program said.