Immigration officers who checked the identification documents used by the Iranian duo who boarded flight MH370 on stolen passports "followed procedures".
 
He said the Iranians entered from Phuket on Feb 28 but did not clarify if they entered using their own passports, as claimed by Interpol, or the stolen ones as claimed by the Immigration Department.
 
"An internal probe was conducted and (the immigration officers who checked the duo's identities) strictly followed the standard operating procedures. 
 
"The issue is not that they were using fake passports but stolen ones.
 
"I don't want this to be manipulated on social media," he said.

The minister added that police even know where the hotel in which the duo stayed in Kuala Lumpur and who had driven them to the airport.

According to Interpol, the duo has travelled on stolen passports, belonging to an Austrian and Italian, that were already on the agency’s extensive stolen passports list.

Asked if the Immigration Department will now link to the Interpol list, Ahmad Zahid said: “We already have.

“There are 40.2 million stolen passports. So we have two lists; a general one which is sent to Immigration and police and the second one is a suspect list.

“Priority is given to the ‘suspect list’ so if anyone is (travelling on a passport) on the ‘suspect list’, the information is sent to Bukit Aman (police headquarters),” he told reporters in Kajang.

Malaysiakini understands that governments need to pay a significant fee to subscribe to the Interpol stolen passports database as well its updates.

It is also learnt that Malaysia chooses not screen all passports which are used to pass through its borders against the database because the voluminous nature of the database.

Malaysia Airlines MH370 disappeared off radar screens at 1.30am on March 8 about 120 nautical miles off Kota Baru above the South China Sea.

Air Force radars, however, spotted an unidentified aircraft at 2.40am.

MH370 was carrying 239 passenger and crew from 14 countries, mostly Malaysia and China, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.