The key suspects, alleged of involvement in the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, will be held accountable in the Netherlands, while the rest can be prosecuted in Ukraine, judge Hendrik Steenhuis of the Hague District Court said on Monday
AMSTERDAM (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th March, 2020) The key suspects, alleged of involvement in the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, will be held accountable in the Netherlands, while the rest can be prosecuted in Ukraine, judge Hendrik Steenhuis of the Hague District Court said on Monday.
Four suspects - Russian nationals Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov, and Leonid Kharchenko of Ukraine - are being confronted with accusations of downing the Malaysian jetliner and killing all 298 people on board while it flew over a conflict zone in Ukraine's east on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014. The trial began in the Hague earlier in the day.
"The main defendants in the flight MH17 crash case in eastern Ukraine will be prosecuted in the Netherlands. It certainly does not mean impunity for those who had more minor roles in the incident - they might be prosecuted in Ukraine," Steenhuis said.
He specified that it was about the crew of the Buk air defense system which the investigation believes was what hit the doomed Boeing.
The hearing was held at the high-security Schiphol court complex.
While the defendants were not present in the court room, the legal team of one of them, Russian national Oleg Pulatov, said that their client had denied any involvement in the incident.
The Ukrainian delegation, in turn, said that they had collected enough evidence to impute the plane's downing to the four suspects, as follows from a statement of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's office.
The Kuala Lumpur-bound plane from Amsterdam crashed on July 17, 2014, over Ukraine's war-torn eastern region of Donbas. The rival forces in Kiev and Donbas have been blaming the plane's downing on each other.
To investigate the deadly crash, a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has been set up by Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine. They have claimed that the plain was hit by a Buk missile that belonged to the Russian armed forces. Russia, which is not part of the JIT, has consistently denied the allegation and offered its cooperation in the investigation.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Moscow has decommissioned all missiles like the one found by the JIT since 2011. Russia has provided the Dutch-led team with radar data and documents proving that the missile belonged to Ukraine, but the investigators omitted this data from their reports.
