Going home: Indonesian rescue personnel loading a coffin bearing the body of a victim of Flight 8501 at the airport in Pangkalan Bun. — AFP
PETALING JAYA: Malaysia respects Indonesia’s decision to stop efforts to recover the remaining wreckage of an AirAsia aircraft and the remains of 92 passengers and crew who died in a crash last month.
Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Aziz Kaprawi said Indonesia, as the country leading the search, had a right to stop the recovery mission as it had gathered enough evidence to facilitate investigation.
“Indonesia is not breaching any international laws by halting the recovery process after searching for a month,” he said.
Indonesia’s head of the navy’s western fleet Rear Admiral Widodo announced yesterday that they were halting the search after a 30-day joint effort to search and recover the wreckage and remains of passengers.
Singapore-bound AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed in bad weather halfway into a two-hour flight from Surabaya, killing all the 155 passengers and seven crew on board on Dec 28.
Debris from the Airbus aircraft and human remains were found floating in the Karimata Strait two days after the crash. The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were recovered two weeks ago. So far, the remains of 70 victims have been recovered.
Aziz said Indonesian officials had informed him that they had reached the decision to stop the recovery mission after ulama assured them that even Muslims’ remains could remain buried at sea.
On the MH370 that went missing last March, Aziz said they would continue the search for at least a year.
“We are not giving up, as Australia which is leading the search team had expressed confidence in continuing the mission,” he said.
