TOKYO (Bernama): The Malaysian government wants strong evidence to show that Russia is responsible for the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 tragedy in 2014, says Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

"They are accusing Russia, but where is the evidence?

"We know the missile that brought down the plane is a Russian-type missile, but it could also be made in Ukraine.

"You need strong evidence to show it was fired by the Russians.

"It could be by the rebels in Ukraine, it could be Ukrainian government because they too have the same missile,” he said during a dialogue and media conference with the Japanese Foreign Correspondent Club (FCCJ) here on Thursday (May 30).

Dr Mahathir said Malaysia accepted the investigation report by Holland but only up the point where the plane was brought down by a missile made by Russia.

He said while the government agreed that the plane was brought down by a Russian missile, it could not be ascertained that the missile was launched by Russia.

The Russians were a military people and they would know that MH17 was a passenger plane, he added.

"I don’t think very highly disciplined party is responsible for launching the missile,” he said.

The Prime Minister said Malaysia should also have been involved in the examining the black box as the plane belonged to Malaysia and there were Malaysians passengers.

"We may not have the expertise, but we can buy the expertise. For some reasons, Malaysia was not allowed to check the black box to see what happened.

"We don’t know why we were excluded from the examination but from the very beginning, we see too much politics in it, and the idea was not to find out how this happened but seemed to be concentrated on trying to pin it on the Russians.

"This is not a neutral kind of examination,” said Dr Mahathir.

Had a neutral party examined and made the conclusion, Malaysia would be willing to accept the findings but here we have parties with political interests in the matter, he added.

Flight MH17, which departed from Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam on its way to Kuala Lumpur, was shot before crashing near Torez in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, about 40km from the Russian border on July 17, 2014.

The incident killed 298 people, including 15 crew members.

Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said the team was convinced that a BUK TELAR missile was used to down MH17, and that it originated from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade (53rd Brigade), which is a unit of the Russian Army in Kursk in the Russian Federation. – Bernama