Lawmakers of the Dutch parliament have required that the government launch a further investigation into the role of Kiev in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, particularly focusing on the Ukraine's refusal to close the airspace despite ongoing hostilities in the area, according to a motion published by the parliament
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd October, 2019) Lawmakers of the Dutch parliament have required that the government launch a further investigation into the role of Kiev in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, particularly focusing on the Ukraine's refusal to close the airspace despite ongoing hostilities in the area, according to a motion published by the parliament.
The issue was debated by the Dutch lawmakers on Monday evening and the motion was supported by all parties that took part in the discussion.
In 2015, the Dutch Safety board ruled that there had been sufficient grounds for Ukraine to close the airspace above the conflict zone in the east of the country.
"The importance of a full fact-finding investigation into the closure of airspace above eastern Ukraine is about more than just state liability," Chris van Dam, a member of the Christian Democratic Appeal, said as quoted by RTL Nieuws.
The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 crashed on July 17, 2014 in eastern Ukraine while en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. All 298 people aboard, mostly Dutch citizens, Malaysians and Australians, were killed. Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics in Ukraine's easternmost Donbas region, where the plane crashed, have exchanged blame for the incident.
The investigation into the MH17 crash is being conducted by Dutch prosecutors and the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which has accused Russia of instigating the attack. According to the JIT, flight MH17 was brought down by a missile that came from the 53rd Anti-aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, based near the Russian city of Kursk.
Moscow has repeatedly denied the JIT's accusations, saying that the claims were unfounded and the investigation was biased.
In September, a witness and potential suspect in the case of the Flight MH17 downing, Vladimir Tsemakh, returned from Ukraine to Russia under the Moscow-Kiev agreement on simultaneous detainee release. Tsemakh was the ex-commander of an air defense unit in the city of Snezhnoye, controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, at the time when the MH17 flight was downed.
On Monday, a spokesperson for the Dutch embassy in Moscow, told Sputnik that the Dutch Prosecutor's Office had asked the colleagues from Russia to provide legal assistance to question Tsemakh as part of the investigation.
