Missile that downed MH17 plane came from Russian military: investigators

A part of the BUK-TELAR rocket that was fired on the MH17 flight is displayed on a table during the press conference of the Joint Investigation Team

(JIT), in Bunnik, on May 24. (AFP) Investigators probing the 2014 downing of flight MH17 said Thursday, for the first time, that the missile which brought down the plane over eastern Ukraine came from a Russian military brigade.

The Joint Investigation Team “has come to the conclusion that the BUK-TELAR that shot down MH17 came from 53rd Anti-aircraft Missile Brigade based in Kursk in Russia,” top Dutch investigator Wilbert Paulissen said.

He told reporters gathered for a press conference that “the 53rd Brigade forms part of the Russian armed forces.”

The Malaysian Airlines flight on a Boeing 777 was blown out of the sky over conflict-torn eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014 while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

All 298 passengers and crew, most of them Dutch, were killed in the disaster. In all there were 17 nationalities on board including Australians, Britons, Malaysians and Indonesians.

The investigators had previously concluded that the plane was hit by a Russian-made BUK missile sys- tem brought in from Russia and fired from territory in Ukraine held by Moscow-backed rebels. But they had stopped short of directly saying who pulled the trigger.

Now the team has painstakingly recreated the route taken by the missile convoy from Kursk towards the border into Ukraine using videos and photos.

Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko said there is “every reason to expect that in the near future the Dutch prosecutor’s office will be able to file a prosecution against the individuals involved in shooting down the plane.” (RTRS)