Malaysian authorities have asked the FBI to analyze deleted data on the flight simulator found at the home of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet's pilot, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
The FBI was also provided copies of the hard drives of computers belonging to Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, according to the officials.
The data of the flight simulator "games" was erased on February 3 — more than a month before the doomed flight took off — and "experts are looking at the logs," Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said at a Wednesday news conference in Sepang, near the capital of Kuala Lumpur.
It was not immediately clear who deleted the files and why.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transport minister, said at the Wednesday news conference that the "passengers, the pilots and the crew remain innocent until proven otherwise."
"For the sake of their families I ask that we refrain from any unnecessary speculation that will make their lives harder," Hishammuddin added.
Also on Wednesday, President Barack Obama said the U.S. has offered "every resource that we have available" to help in the search for the vanished Boeing 777.
