MOSCOW, Nov 21 ― Russia has invited Malaysian experts to study all of the information it had given to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on the 2014 Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash over eastern Ukraine, Sputnik news agency reported Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying on Thursday.
Lavrov remarked that he and Malaysian Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah has discussed Russia's contribution to the MH17 probe ― “what Russia has done to ensure absolutely objective, detailed, concrete investigation and all the things we have transferred as data, as demonstration of what may have happened and what conclusion there might be, and all that is ignored by the JIT.”
“As far as I understand, Malaysia was not informed about the data we handed to the Joint Investigation Team, so we invited our Malaysian friends to send their experts so that our experts would share with them everything that was shown and sent to the Netherlands for the Joint Investigation Team.
“I hope it will help our Malaysian colleagues to be more informed than other participants of the investigative team would want them to be,” Lavrov said at a joint press conference with his Malaysian counterpart.
On the same development, Saifuddin added Malaysia remains committed to releasing all the evidence related to the ill-fated downing of the MH17 flight.
“Malaysia remains steadfast in our position that we would like to see all evidence made public and that every interested party who has any evidence to offer should be given the opportunity to have the evidence tabled for the investigation,” he said, pledging not to to make any decision “as who is right and who is wrong” prior to studying all the evidence.
“Malaysia as a party to MH17 incident wants to be the participant to the JIT as quickly as possible and as soon as JIT was established, but unfortunately our entry into the JIT process was delayed ... That is something that we do not feel very comfortable with,” he stressed. ― Bernama
