Malaysia appreciates the Joint Investigation Team (JIT)’s presentation of the latest report on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 that was shot down five years ago, killing everyone on board.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement today, saying that Malaysia remains committed to the JIT process and is equally committed to ensuring the process is transparent, credible and effective.

“Our approach has always been that conclusions must be based on evidence, and not politically motivated. We call on all parties to co-operate with the process to discover the truth,” the statement said.

Yesterday, in a press conference in the Netherlands, JIT named four suspects to be charged over the death of the passengers and crew on board flight MH17.

In a statement by the Ministry of Justice and Security of the Netherlands, the trial will begin in March 2020 in the country.

“The Hague district court will hear the case and the hearings will take place at Justice Complex Schiphol,” it said. The statement was made available online at https://www.government.nl/topics/mh17-incident/achieving-justice/the-criminal-investigation.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Dutch-led investigation team announced charges against Igor Girkin, a former colonel in the FSB, the successor agency to KGB, and both Sergey Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov, who worked for the Russian military intelligence agency known as GRU.

The news agency reported that prosecutors also charged Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian citizen who led a Russian-backed separatist unit under the command of Dubinsky.

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

The incident killed all 298 people on board, including 15 crew members.

- Bernama