MH17 trial in Netherlands to start without Russian, Ukrainian suspects

The reconstructed wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 put on display during a press conference in Gilze-Rijen, central Netherlands, in 2015. File picture: Peter Dejong/AP

The reconstructed wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 put on display during a press conference in Gilze-Rijen, central Netherlands, in 2015. File picture: Peter Dejong/AP

Published Mar 6, 2020

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Amsterdam - Four fugitive suspects go on

trial in the Netherlands on Monday charged with the murder of

298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 which

was shot down with a Russian-made missile over eastern Ukraine

in July 2014.

Wreckage of the Boeing 777 fell to the ground in fields

surrounding the Ukrainian village of Hrabove in territory held

by pro-Russian separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces.

The jet was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it

was hit by a surface-to-air missile. There were no survivors.

Arrest warrants were issued last year for three Russians and

a Ukrainian who were identified by a Dutch-led Joint

Investigation Team (JIT) which spent several years collecting

evidence to identify those behind the attack.

The four, Russians Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Igor

Girkin, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, had senior positions in

the pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The JIT

said they had not pulled the trigger, but colluded to carry out

the attack.

Girkin, a vocal and battle-hardened Russian nationalist,

was minister of defence in the self-declared Donetsk People’s

Republic (DNR) in Ukraine. Dubinsky, Pulatov and Kharchenko were

members of the separatists’ military intelligence unit.

The defendants are at large and are not expected to show up

for the hearings at a high-security courtroom near Amsterdam's

Schiphol airport where they will be prosecuted under Dutch law.

If they don't appear, or fail to send lawyers, the judges

could rule that the trial be held in absentia.

In addition to charges for the deaths, they also face

preliminary allegations of obtaining a missile launcher with the

intent to bring down an aircraft.

Russia has consistently denied any involvement or providing

financial or military support to pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said

the Kremlin would wait to see how the trial panned out before

commenting, but added that Russia had always had doubts about

the objectivity of the Dutch-led investigation.

The JIT includes judicial authorities from Australia,

Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, in addition to Dutch police and

prosecutors.

The aircraft's downing led to sanctions against Moscow by

the European Union. It also heightened political tension between

Russia and Western powers who blame it for the disaster, which

killed 193 Dutch, 43 Malaysian and 27 Australian nationals,

among others.

The largest criminal investigation in Dutch history

painstakingly reconstructed the events leading up to and on July

17, 2014. Police and prosecutors examined tens of thousands of

pieces of evidence, including videos, communication taps,

satellite imagery, photos and social media posts.

Among the evidence are images plotting the missile

launcher's journey as it crossed into Ukraine ahead of the

disaster. A reconstruction presented by prosecutors showed it

returning to Russia a day later with one fewer missiles.

Intercepts released in November by the JIT showed that two

of the suspects had been in contact with Vladislav Surkov, a

senior Putin aide, and Sergey Aksyonov, a Russian-appointed

leader in Russian-annexed Crimea., it said.

The communications between the DNR militant leaders and

Russian government officials "raise questions about their

possible involvement in the deployment of the (missile), which

brought down flight MH17", the JIT said.

Two weeks have been scheduled for the first proceedings,

which could be largely procedural. The trial is expected to run

through 2020 and may be longer in the event of delays.

The JIT concluded in May 2018 that the missile launcher

"that took down flight MH17 belonged to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft

Missile Brigade of the Russian Federation". It was based at the

Kursk military base, just across the Ukrainian border, it said.

The Russian Defence Ministry said at the time that “not a

single air defence missile launcher of the Russian Armed Forces

has ever crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border”. 

Reuters

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