Is air freight the best way to ship such a quantity of mangosteens? This seems rather odd. Smells more like smuggling than terror to me

Why should one take the last Malaysian military report so seriously? the heading could easily be exactly 180 degrees wrong, if it even was the right aircraft.

Simple answer for the lack of passenger contacts--they and the cabin crew all were killed--either gassed or died of anoxia when cabin was depressurized and no O2 flowed from masks.

My guess is that the first officer (maybe the captain was also involved) got paid off to deliver something somewhere that was loaded as mangosteens--gold or drugs, for example. Perhaps Malaysian radar post was also paid off. Once delivery was made the airplane was no longer needed.

I seem to remember that the western Sahara has been the site of many "lost" aircraft landings from drug smugglers flying over from South America.