Russia wants to silence MH17 witnesses, claims lawyer

WITNESSES testifying in the trial of four men accused of shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 needed “extraordinary” levels of protection due to fears that Russia wants to silence them, prosecutors have said.

Thijs Berger, a prosecution lawyer, told judges at Amsterdman’s Schiphol Judicial Centre yesterday that several witnesses had requested anonymity and “feared for their lives” if their identities became known.

“There are strong indications that the Russian government is very keen to thwart this investigation and that it is not averse to deploying the Russian security services to this end,” he said. “They have been accused of multiple murders in recent years committed in various European countries.” He appeared to be referring to the GRU, the military intelligence agency that the UK government believed carried out the chemical attack in Salisbury in 2018, on Sergei Skripal, the former spy.

Dutch authorities said they had recovered a laptop used to hack Malaysian police investigating the plane crash when they arrested four GRU suspects in The Hague in 2018.

Prosecutors said those in need of special protection included a Russian who claimed to have been at the launch site. Flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it came down over Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

Boudewijn van Eijck, a lawyer for one of the GRU suspects, challenged the prosecution’s assertion that Russia could not be trusted, telling the court: “Now, if all that were to be true, I wonder why the Dutch authorities, at the time when it fits them, ask for the cooperation of the Russian Federation.”