The Dutch government released dozens of documents yesterday about the downing in Ukraine of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but much of the information was redacted.

Broadcaster RTL News, which was one of a number of outlets that had requested the information be made public, said that it would protest against the number of redactions and take the government to court if necessary to compel it to reveal more details.

“We want the relevant facts so that a serious reconstruction can be made of the cabinet’s performance” after the crash, said RTL deputy editor Pieter Klein.

Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 passengers, two-thirds of whom were Dutch.

Crash investigators and police in the Netherlands are probing the cause, which is believed to have been either a surface-to-air or air-to-air missile strike.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government is coming under increasing pressure to reveal all it knew about the risks of allowing passenger planes to fly over conflict-torn eastern Ukraine last year.

Mr Rutte has also avoided explicitly saying that a missile downed the Boeing 777 as it was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Amsterdam claims that it has to be cautious in what it says because Dutch authorities are leading criminal and civil investigations into the crash.

The documents’ release appears to have cast little new light on what the government knew.