No suspects identified for downing of Flight 17

THE Dutch prosecutor leading an international criminal investigation into the downing last year of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine’s battlefields said yesterday the probe has not yet identified specific suspects for possible prosecution, but that he is optimistic it will ultimately be a success.

Fred Westerbeke said the international team has a number of “persons of interest” but declined to identify them. He added that the probe will probably take until at least the end of the year.

The flight heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was brought down on 17 July last year over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

The five-nation criminal investigation team said that the most likely scenario was that a surface-to-air missile downed the aircraft. Both pro-russian rebels and Ukrainian forces fighting in the region at the time have denied involvement.

Earlier this year, prosecutors appealed for witnesses who could “tell more about the transport, crew and firing of a Buk missile system in the Donbass region” at the time of the downing of the aircraft.

The joint investigation team of experts from the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Ukraine and Belgium has interviewed more than 100 witnesses, Mr Westerbeke said. Some relatives of victims of the crash have expressed anger at the slow pace of investigations into the crash.

Mr Westerbeke said he understood frustrations but defended the pace of the probe, saying its results must be “transparent, robust and reach the required evidentiary thresholds in order to stand up in a lawsuit”.

A UN diplomat said last week that the five countries want a UN tribunal to prosecute those responsible.