Det-Supt David Nelson
across the border into Russia the following day.
In September last year, Dutch chief police investigator Wilbert Paulissen said the missile was fired from a field near the village of Pervomaiskyi, which was at the time in Russian hands.
“Based on the criminal investigation we have concluded that flight MH17 was brought down by the Buk missile of the series 9M83 that came from the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said.
Despite this technical evidence, no one has ever been charged or extradited, although Nelson confirms there are more than 100 persons of interest in the case.
“Now the real focus is on the who,” Nelson says, “… who was involved … who assisted in the transportation to the launch site and who was ordering, commanding that piece of equipment. Who ordered it … to be delivered to the launch site and who commanded it and controlled the firing of the missile.”
Asked if he believes it was an accidental or an intentional act, Nelson replies: “I couldn’t say, hand on heart, which one of those two scenarios it is right now.
“That’s what we are moving towards, that’s the investigation very much, to find the truth and to establish who the perpetrators are of the criminal act and bring those perpetrators to justice.”
In the moments after the plane’s downing, pro-Moscow rebel leader Igor Strelkov tweeted that his men had shot down a Ukrainian air force Antonov-26. Several military aircraft had been shot out of the sky in previous days.
“We just hit down An-26. We warned you … do not fly in ‘our sky’,” he wrote. “And here is the video confirmation of the ‘bird dropping’.”
The video was quickly deleted when it was determined the jet was a civilian passenger jet carrying 298 innocent people.
But a video posted on Strelkov’s website captures three men talking about the plane crash, while smoke billows from the crash site.
“Just now the plane was hit,” the first man says, while a second replies: “All over, it is already over”.
The second man continues, adding: “They got it, they hit it. They shoot and hit it.”
Then a third man laughs and says: “It was worth bringing this thing, wasn’t it?”
The Ukrainian secret service also claimed it had intercepted phone calls between Igor Bezler, the commander of the Russianbacked rebels known as the Donetsk People’s Republic, and a colonel in the Russian intelligence department, Vasili Geranin, soon after the crash, and that Geranin was personally supervising the rebel leader.
In July this year, Geranin was reportedly locked up by Russian intelligence agents amid claims Moscow was trying to “liquidate” all key witnesses to the MH17 crash.
Nelson would not say specifically if the police team is looking at Russian suspects, adding that given Russia’s constitution, it will not extradite Russian nationals or Russian citizens.
Asked how many Russian witnesses or suspects could be extradited to the Netherlands on that basis, he says: “That’s a very good question”.
Nelson says the intercepted audio obtained by the Ukrainians forms part of the investigation. “Those sort of intercepts give you a window into what was occurring and why it occurred and how it occurred, so yes, (it’s) very important to the investigation,” he says.
Police expect to potentially lay charges of murder, or Dutch-specific crimes relating to the downing of an aircraft.
“Those are two of the primary offences we are looking at,” Nelson says.
The AFP commitment is costing Australian taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, and family liaison officers have been deployed to work with every one of the 38 Australian families who lost a loved one.
On the third anniversary of the crash this year, many of the relatives of MH17 victims attended the opening of a new MH17 memorial near Schiphol Airport, the departure point of the doomed flight.
The Australian victims of the tragedy included the three Maslin children from Perth — Mo, 12, Evie, 10, and Otis, 8, who were flying home with their grandfather Nick Norris.
A family of five from Melbourne’s western suburbs — residents Shaliza Zain Dewa, her husband Johannes van den Hende and their children Piers, 15, Marnix, 12, and Margaux, 8 — were killed.
Nelson says the event had a huge impact on the “grieving nations” and “I think people would like to see the truth come out and people to be brought to justice for the acts”.