KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 12 — The wreckage of the downed Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH17 should be brought back to Malaysia for investigations as it is the property of the country and not the Netherlands, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad urged today.
Dr Mahathir said he was “annoyed” that Malaysia is apparently excluded from the crash’s investigation, and “grudgingly permitted” to participate in examining the wreckage that was recovered.
“As a Malaysian, I demand that the wreckage of MH17 be brought back to Malaysia as a matter of right.
“Malaysians should examine it in full view of the people.
“After all, it is Malaysia which is being sued by the relatives of the victims,” Dr Mahathir wrote in his blog yesterday.
Dr Mahathir said not only was the plane Malaysia, but the pilots, staff and some of the passengers were also Malaysians.
“Granted, the highest number of the passengers who lost their lives were Dutch. But under what law is the aircraft the property of the Dutch?” the 89-year-old asked.
Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister singled out the fact that the “black box” flight recorders were “surrendered” to the Dutch and British, even when they contain tape or electronic recordings of the conversations and sounds before the crash.
“Can it be that Malaysians have no capacity to hear the records, even?
“Are only the Dutch and the British capable of doing this?” asked Dr Mahathir.
On Tuesday, it was reported that crash investigators will begin reconstructing the MAS Boeing 777 shot down over eastern Ukraine in July, killing all 298 people on board, after wreckage arrived by truck at a Dutch air force hangar.
Members of its national Safety Board will piece together the remains of the plane to determine exactly what brought down flight MH17.
A parallel criminal investigation is being conducted by Dutch prosecutors in 11 countries to identify possible culprits. Two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were Dutch.
The wreckage was transferred under a deal with Kiev and, through mediation by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, pro-Russian separatists.
