MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The minister expressed hope that JIT would identify those responsible and the culprits would be prosecuted.
"Probe by Joint Investigation Team (JIT) Ukraine, Belgium and Malaysia is still ongoing, by next year, we have been asked to extend investigation, extended till end of next year or early 2018 to end the criminal investigation. The report has been presented on October 1 is just a preliminary report. Although it has been identified who shot MH17, but there are a hundreds of them, they have to call all of them for questioning," Dtuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said at the Malaysian Parliament as quoted by The Malaymail Online.
Flight MH17 crashed on July 17, 2014 in eastern Ukraine while flying to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. All 298 passengers and crew aboard the passenger jet died.
The JIT, which comprises Australia, Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium and Malaysia, tasked with probing the crash announced on September 28 that the MH17 airliner was allegedly downed by a Buk missile system which was brought from Russia and consequently returned there. Furthermore the investigation believes that the missile was launched by the territory controlled by the Donbas militias.
Moscow immediately rejected the findings, calling the report "biased and politically motivated." The Russian Defense Ministry cast doubt on the conclusions of the investigators, saying that no Russian missile systems, including Buk, have ever crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border.
