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MH17 wreckage should be brought back to Malaysia, says Dr M

Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is demanding that the wreckage of the ill-fated flight MH17 be brought back to Malaysia for investigation as it belongs to the country and not the Netherlands.

Expressing his annoyance over the apparent exclusion of Malaysia from the probe into the cause of the crash, Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister said the country was only "grudgingly permitted" to participate in the examination of the recovered wreckage.

"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," he wrote on his popular blog, chedet, yesterday.

Investigators have begun reassembling the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 which was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July to determine what exactly brought down the airliner, killing all 298 people on board.

The reconstruction will take several months and a final report on the cause of the crash is not expected until mid-2015.

At the same time, 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.

Dr Mahathir also said he found it perplexing that Malaysia seemed to be "unduly grateful" for being allowed to participate in examining the wreckage.

"What is there to be grateful for?" he asked.

The statesman said the aircraft, crew and quite a number of passengers were Malaysians.

"Granted the highest number of passengers who lost their lives were Dutch. But under what law is the aircraft the property of the Dutch?" he said.

He was also peeved that the recovered black box which was initially handed over to the Malaysian authorities by anti-Ukraine separatists, had been surrendered to the Dutch and British investigators.

"As far as I know the black box contains a tape or electronic recording of the conversations and sounds some minutes 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?" he said. – December 12, 2014.