“They are accusing Russia but where is the evidence?” Mahathir told reporters at the Japanese Foreign Correspondents Club (FCCJ) in Tokyo on Thursday.
“You need strong evidence to show it was fired by the Russians,” the prime minister went on,
according to the Malaysian state news agency Bernama.
“It could be by the rebels in Ukraine; it could be Ukrainian government because they too have the same missile.”
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT), whose report last year blamed Moscow for shooting down MH17, barred Russia from participating in the investigation, but involved the government of Ukraine. Although Malaysia is also a member of JIT, Mahathir revealed that his country’s officials have been blocked from examining the plane’s flight recorders.
“For some reason, Malaysia was not allowed to check the black box to see what happened,” he said.
“We don’t know why we are excluded from the examination but from the very beginning, we see too much politics in it.”
“This is not a neutral kind of examination,” Mahathir added.
Rejecting the JIT accusations, Russia made public the evidence the Dutch-led researchers refused to look into, including the serial number of the missile that allegedly struck MH17, showing that it was manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1986 and was in the arsenal of the Ukrainian army at the time of the tragedy.
