Testimony from new witnesses could be used during the ongoing investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, prosecutor Thijs Berger said on Tuesday during the second day of the hearings in the Netherlands
AMSTERDAM (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th March, 2020) Testimony from new witnesses could be used during the ongoing investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, prosecutor Thijs Berger said on Tuesday during the second day of the hearings in the Netherlands.
"New witnesses may appear ... If the statement is appropriate and the safety of the witness allows, this may be the reason for adding testimony to the file of the case. Then it will be assessed whether this witness needs to be heard or not," Berger said.
He added that prosecutors have almost completed their investigation and that any additions to the case file would be added before the commencement of the pre-trial review hearing in June.
On Monday, judicial spokeswoman Marije Knijff told Sputnik that materials compiled by independent Dutch journalist Max van der Werff, which claim that Buk missile systems were absent from the area close to the crash site, could be included in the case files.
All 298 people on board MH17, bound for Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, died after the aircraft crashed on July 17, 2014. Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics in Ukraine's Donbas region have accused each other of shooting down the jet.
In June 2019, the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) named Russian nationals Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Igor Girkin, and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko as suspects. Moscow has repeatedly denied involvement in the incident and has called the JIT investigation biased as Russia's evidence, including radar data showing that the plane had been shot down by a Ukrainian Buk missile, has been ignored by investigators.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday said that he would not comment on the ongoing judicial proceedings.
