Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said senior Malaysian officials initially suspected the pilot of a Boeing 777 on Malaysian Airlines (flight MN370) for intentionally causing the plane crash nearly six years ago.

On March 8, 2014, the plane from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers aboard mysteriously disappeared. No remains were found in the search area of 120,000 sq km in the southern Indian Ocean. The search operations were terminated in January 2017. Since then, the reasons for the disappearance of the aircraft, the biggest mystery in modern civil aviation, have been the subject of much speculation.

"My very clear understanding from the very top levels of the Malaysian government is that from very, very early on here they thought it was a murder-suicide by the pilot," Abbott said in a clip from a documentary airing Wednesday (Feb 19) on Sky News.

Abbott declined to name any individuals to support his claim. Najib Razak was Malaysia's prime minister when the plane went missing.

The family and relatives of the first pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, have always rejected the hypothesis, and relatives of the victims have blamed the airline and the Malaysian government for hiding the drama, AFP notes.

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