Asuad Khan Mustafa told the daily that his sister, Faizah, and Zaharie had decided to join their daughter Aishah in Geelong, and that Zaharie had even sent money over for the purchase of a property.
“He (Zaharie) wanted to migrate to Australia. He even asked his daughter to buy a house there and gave her money to do it. The moment he disappeared, that plan ended.
“He wanted the daughter to work in Australia and they (Faizah and Zaharie) would go there,” Asuad was quoted as saying.
Zaharie, who was 53, was said to have planned to retire at 60 and move with his wife to the city in Victoria, so that they could spend more time with their daughter who works there as an architect.
Two days ago, The Australian quoted Fatima Pardi, a married woman, as saying that Zaharie had grown close to her and her children after they had met as volunteers for PKR during the General Election in May 2013.
She added however, that they were nothing more than friends and that he was especially fond of her three children, one of whom has severe cerebral palsy.
Fatima related how Zaharie had come to her house regularly, buying gifts for her children, who are now aged 5, 8 and 12.
“There was nothing more than friendship and I feel compelled to finally break my silence to counter speculation that Zaharie might have hijacked the plane.
“He was a friend of mine. We were friends. He told me he saw potential in me and that he would help me build a better future for myself and my children.
“Since the incident, I have refused all interviews because I have been afraid that what I say will be misinterpreted, and that it will hurt Captain Zaharie’s family’s feelings,” the daily quoted her as saying.
Another friend of Zaharie also defended the pilot, who has been part of speculation that MH370 was intentionally flown off course and crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.
Peter Chong met Zaharie through the same political party connection, when they were helping out the PKR election campaign in 2013.
“Zaharie was one of thousands who volunteered in the lead-up to the 2013 campaign and he would spend eight or nine hours a day helping when not rostered to fly.
“Yes, he was angry at corruption, and felt the courts were being abused to push (allegedly) politically-motivated sodomy charges against Anwar Ibrahim, but he was neither a political nor religious extremist.
“Neither was Zaharie in court on March 7, 2014, as many have reported previously, when Anwar lost his appeal,” Chong told The Australian, adding that by early 2014, Zaharie had begun to withdraw from the political scene.
On March 8, 2014, MAS flight MH370 left the Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing, China, with 227 passengers and 12 flight and cabin crew.
Somewhere over the South China Sea, all communication was lost with MH370 and the plane was later found to have made a turnaround, flying back over the northern part of Peninsula Malaysia before heading south towards the Indian Ocean.
It is thought to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, about 2,000km west of Perth, in Western Australia. The search for any wreckage of the plane is ongoing, though some parts confirmed to be from the Boeing 777-200 aircraft have been found off the coast of Reunion Island, off Madagascar and in Mozambique, both on the south of the African continent.
The theory that the pilot was behind the crash surfaced recently in an article in the New York Magazine. The report alleged that information from the Malaysian investigation into MH370’s disappearance showed that Zaharie had plotted a similar, though not identical, flight path as that believed to have been taken by MH370 just a month before the incident.
However, the writer of the article, Jeff Wise, has since corrected the story on his personal blog, with a post saying it now appeared more likely the information was from “two or possibly three separate flights” and not one single flight plot to the southern Indian Ocean, The Australian reported.