Families of MH17 victims want reparation

SCHIPHOL, Netherlands — A lawyer for relatives of victims killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 told trial judges Monday that the families want damages as a recognition of the injustice they suffered and told judges that Russian “disinformation” compounds their grief.

Lawyer Arlette Schijns was speaking at the resumption of the Dutch trial in absentia of three Russians and a Ukrainian charged with offenses including mass murder for their involvement in the downing of MH17. bAll 298 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed when the plane was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014, by a Buk missile fired from territory controlled by proRussia rebels.

Schijns, who is representing 450 relatives, urged the court not to lose sight of the suffering of the hundreds of people who lost their loved ones as she addressed the judge son legal questions linked to families' right to claim damages.

“This is about individual s who were confronted six years ago with a terrible loss that continues to have an influence on their lives today,” she said.

Some families watched Schijns speak from a public gallery in the court on the edge of the airport from where the doomed flight took off.

Lawyers said that 76 relatives have so f ar said they want to make a victim impact statement during the trial, and 316 have said they plan to apply for damages.

“The criminal trial is important for them because it will establish the facts of what happened on July 17,2014. Who is responsible for it? What sentence they deserve ,” she said. “In other words, it's about justice, fairness, crime and punishment.”