Alireza Kolmohammadi has
been placed on Thailand’s criminal watch list for booking two tickets in
Pattaya for countrymen using stolen passports to board an ill-fated
Malaysian Airlines jetliner.
Teerarak Suthathiwong
An Iranian who booked two tickets in Pattaya for countrymen
using stolen passports to board an ill-fated Malaysian Airlines jetliner
has been placed on Thailand’s criminal watch list.
Frequent Thai tourist Alireza Kolmohammadi, 39, who has been booking
tickets with South Pattaya’s Grand Horizon travel agency for years, is
accused of supplying undocumented aliens with stolen passports to help
them travel illegally to third countries. Immigration police have orders
to arrest him on sight at any border crossing or airport.
Grand Horizon staffers said Kolmohammadi, 39, ordered tickets under the
names of Italian national Luigi Maraldi and Austrian man Christian Kozel
for seats on the MH370 flight that disappeared over the Gulf of Thailand
March 8. Both men - still alive - had reported their passports stolen
within the past two years. Maraldi, 27, is still living in Phuket.
Two unidentified Iranians used the passports to board the Kuala Lumpur
to Beijing flight that remained missing almost a week later. A growing
number of international media reports, citing unnamed investigators,
said evidence increasingly points to someone taking over the plane,
shutting down its communications system and flying for several more
hours before crashing into Indian Ocean. Despite vehement denials of the
western newspaper reports, Malaysian officials expanded the search area
to the Indian Ocean March 13.
As many as five passengers aboard the doomed jet are believed to have
traveled on stolen passports. When news broke that two of them booked in
Pattaya, local police swooped down on both Grand Horizon and partner Six
Star Travel Co. in Central Festival Pattaya Beach, which actually issued
the tickets and sold them for 51,000 baht cash to Iranian Hashem Saheb
Gharani Golestani, 51.
Police took Golestani, a 17-year Pattaya resident who runs a
picture-framing business, in for questioning and searched his home March
11, but soon released him, saying there was no evidence he was connected
to the stolen-passport ring or any terrorism.
International media also quoted both Interpol and Pattaya police
officials as saying that Kolmohammadi is not suspected of any links to
terrorists. He had originally booked the two Iranians on a different
airline, then rebooked days later, asking travel agents for a cheaper
flight.
His arrest warrant is related to human trafficking and stolen documents.
Pattaya police Superintendent Col. Supachai Phuikaewkhum said the
Iranian first traveled to Thailand in June 2012 and lived at the Royal
Thai Residence on Thepprasit Soi 7 until departing for Tehran on Dec. 1.
Interpol officials in France were quoted last week saying that the two
Iranian passengers also were “probably not terrorists.”
Investigators, however, saying someone - either a crewmember or
passenger - took over MH370, “systematically” shutting down its radio
and data-based communications system and likely flying up to four hours
more before crashing, according to major newspapers in New York,
Washington and London.
The HTMS Pattani, which initially helped search for the plane in the
Straits of Malacca, was ordered to return to Sattahip for maintenance.
