Just one body recovered from the MH17 crash with strong evidence of wrongdoing would be good enough for Malaysia's prosecutors to get working on charging the criminals who downed the plane, attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail opined.

 

Speaking to New Straits Times (NST) on Sunday, Gani emphasised that Malaysia wanted the perpetrators, who blew up the Boeing 777 plane with 298 people onboard in eastern Ukraine on July 17, to face justice under local laws.

 

Forty-three Malaysians also perished in plane operated by Malaysian Airlines along with people from many other nations.

 

Malaysia is looking at invoking the Civil Aviation Act, the Security offences (Special Measures Act) and the Penal Code, Abdul Gani said.

 

In the NST report, Abdul Gani was quoted saying: "We need to prove beyond reasonable doubt, not beyond shadow of a doubt."

 

He told NST this after meeting in The Hague with Eurojust, an agency of the European Union that deals with judicial cooperation in criminal matters.

 

Criminal investigation underway

Meanwhile, NST said that a criminal investigation by Ukranian, Dutch, Australian, American and Malaysian investigators was already underway.

 

In The Hague, public prosecutors and investigators from 12 countries involved with MH17 discussed their strategy for judicial co-operation as well as the establishment of a joint investigation team (JIT).

 

The meeting lasted some eight hours and NST noted that Russia was not represented in the meeting.

 

The Dutch government had also said that MH17's perpetrators would likely face trial in the Netherlands or Malaysia and not the International Criminal Court (ICC), as 195 Dutch nationals were killed onboard MH17, which was on a routine flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.