MEDAN. An Indonesian family will file a lawsuit against Malaysia Airlines and Boeing Co. after Flight MH370 went missing from the radar on March 8.Januari Siregar, who represents the Siregar clan, said the lawsuit was taken by the grieving family as a response to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who said on March 24 that the ill-fated plane “ended in the southern Indian Ocean” and that there were no survivors.“We are not demanding compensation. We are demanding accuracy on the whereabouts of MH370,” he told The Jakarta Post in Medan, North Sumatra, on Wednesday.Januari explained that he was working with the Chicago-based Ribbeck Law Chartered when he filed a lawsuit against national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia after its A300-B4 plane crashed in Deli Serdang, North Sumatra, in 1997, killing 234 people.Chrisman Siregar, whose son Firman Chandra Siregar was among the 239 people onboard, refused to comment on the lawsuit. “Please, we are still in grief and need some space,” he said.Ribbeck Law Chartered has filed a petition for discovery against Boeing Co., manufacturer of the aircraft, and Malaysia Airlines, operator of the plane, in a Cook County, Illinois, circuit court, Reuters reported.The petition was meant to secure evidence of possible design and manufacturing defects that may have contributed to the disaster, the law firm said.Though both Boeing and Malaysia Airlines were named in the filing, the focus of the case would be on Boeing, Ribbeck’s lawyers said.“Our theory of the case is that there was a failure of the equipment in the cockpit that may have caused a fire that rendered the crew unconscious, or perhaps because of the defects in the fuselage which had been reported before, there was some loss in the cabin pressure that also made the pilot and copilot unconscious,” Monica Kelly, head of Global Aviation Litigation at Ribbeck Law Chartered, said.“That plane was actually a ghost plane for several hours until it ran out of fuel.”Eighteen days into the search for MH370, the latest satellite images are the first to suggest that a debris field from the plane — rather than just a few objects — may be floating in the southern Indian Ocean, though no wreckage has been confirmed. Previously, an Australian satellite detected two large objects and a Chinese satellite detected one.All three finds were made in roughly the same area, far southwest of Australia.Clouds obscured the latest satellite images, but about 100 objects could be seen in the gaps, ranging in length from 1 meter to 23 meters. In Kuala Lumpur, Defense and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said some of them “appeared to be bright, possibly indicating solid materials”, the Associated Press reported.The images were taken Sunday and relayed by French-based Airbus Defense and Space, a division of Europe’s Airbus Group; its businesses include the operation of satellites and satellite communications.Malaysia’s deputy defense minister, Abdul Rahim Bakri, told parliament that no action was taken when the unidentified plane was spotted because it was assumed it had been ordered to turn back.“It was detected by our radar, but the turn-back was by a non-hostile plane and we thought maybe it was at the directive of the control tower,” he was quoted by local media as saying.“We’re throwing everything we have at this search,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Nine Network television.“This is about the most inaccessible spot imaginable. It’s thousands of kilometers from anywhere,” he later told Seven Network television.In Beijing, a delegation of Malaysian government and airline officials explained what they knew to relatives of those lost. They were met with skepticism and even ridicule by some of the roughly 100 people in the audience, who questioned some of the report’s findings.“Time will heal emotions that are running high. We fully understand,” Hishammuddin said as quoted by AP.

Editor: Asnil Amri