Phone data trail in probe

Ma l a w i Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) and mobile phone operators yesterday came under the spotlight as they outlined the efforts made to trace contact with passengers aboard the crashed military plane on June 10 2024.

The Parliamentary Adhoc Committee investigating the plane crash that killed Vice- President Saulos Chilima and eight others interrogated former Macra director general Daud Suleman, TNM plc and Airtel Malawi plc.

However, the three parties gave contradictory testimonies in some aspects, including accounts of when passenger phone data became available during the search for the Malawi Defence Force aircraft that crashed at Nthungwa in Viphya Plantation.

The Airtel Malawi plc team, led by then managing director Charles Kamoto now heading Airtel Tanzania, further told the committee that four of the mobile phone handsets belonging to the passengers were in usable condition.

Suleman: Delays in

retrieval. | Kelly Livimbo

Kamoto, who gave his testimony virtually from his base in Dar es Salaam, also said the list of passengers’ numbers provided by the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) did not include Chilima’s contacts.

“Upon the request to help trace the phone locations, I got four numbers but that of the Vice-President was not there. But because the Vice-President was my former boss at Airtel and we were in constant touch, I had his number so I included it,” he said, drawing a question to confirm he used his initiative which he responded in the affirmative.

In his testimony, Suleman told the committee that delays occurred in retrieval and reporting of some phones that registered on network towers, although the data was eventually provided.

But a three-member TNM plc team led by chief executive officer Michel Hébert said active network data could ordinarily be retrieved within minutes and that delays were largely linked to the information initially supplied to the operator.

Hébert told the inquiry that Suleman contacted him at 1.51pm on June 10 2024 and that he immediately agreed to help

search a number registered to then Cabinet minister Nancy Tembo and later two numbers associated with Chilima’s widow Mary, all of which produced results showing the phones were not aboard the aircraft. TNM received the full passenger information much later.”

Hébert said the operator subsequently had to use customer-registration records to identify phone numbers associated with passengers after the initial searches failed to produce useful locations.

TNM chief technical officer Lloyd Gowera said some of the numbers initially provided were not active on TNM while others had apparently been inactive since April 2024.

“The Nthungwa tower was

also working,” he said.

Gowera said a phone whose data session was recorded at Mzimba Turn-Off, about 41.8 kilometres from Nthungwa, could potentially have been in the vicinity of Nthungwa earlier, depending on where the aircraft was when the session ended.

“This is the same number that did a USSD transaction days later on June 21 but other than that, there was no other activity,” he said.

Suleman told the committee that an initial passenger manifest containing phone numbers was sent to the heads of Airtel Malawi and TNM by then Secretary to the President and Cabinet Colleen Zamba.

Gowera said the exercise involving confirmed TNM numbers began around 10am on June 11 with feedback available between 11am and 11.30am.

“If we were given proper numbers on the first day, we could have, I think, pinpointed that Nthungwa was also part of the areas to be looked at,” he said.

In her earlier testimony, Zamba told the inquiry that one of the phones was last detected on a Raiply tower at about 12.30pm

Effiness Katunga Kanyemba, widow of Chilima’s physician Dan Kanyemba, earlier testified that her husband’s phone went unanswered around 4pm on the day of the crash.

In his testimony yesterday, Kamoto said Airtel could not trace activity on Chilima’s number while his wife’s number was connected to the Area 30 site in Lilongwe.

He said that Zamba, at 2.43pm, provided additional numbers for Daniel Kanyemba, Chisomo Chimaneni and Lucas Kapheni and that Airtel subsequently established that Kanyemba’s phone was ringing but went unanswered, while the other two numbers could not be accessed

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