Four charged with murder over downing of plane above Ukraine
● Victims’ relatives welcome prospect of a trial even in the absence of accused
Three Russians and one Ukrainian have been charged with murder in the Netherlands over the downing of flight MH17 in July 2014 with the loss of 298 lives.
Dutch National Police chief Wilbert Paulissen identified Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov, along with Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, as suspects in the downing of the plane in Ukrainian air space, and announced that their trial would start in March next year.
There are no plans to seek the extradition of the four.
All passengers and crew on board the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed on 17 July, 2014, when a missile shattered the Boeing 777 in midair sending debris and bodies raining down on to farms and fields of sunflowers.
One of the named murder suspects denied Ukrainian separatists shot down the plane. Girkin said yesterday that “the insurgents did not shoot it down”.
An international investigation team looking into the plane crash has blamed it on a Russian missile that was shot from separatist-held territory.
Girkin, a Russian national, was a military chief of the Russia-backed rebels in the area at the time and was named by the investigators as one of the key suspects.
The international team investigating the downing of the flight will not ask Russia and Ukraine to extradite the four suspects.
Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said that the team realises that the constitutions of both countries prohibit that.
“In the short term we will ask Russia to hand the summons to the suspects who are in the Russian Federation,” he said.
Silene Fredriksz-hoogzand, whose son Bryce was among the dead, expressed relief that five years after the plane was blown out of the sky above conflict-torn eastern Ukraine, a trial could finally start next year.
“This is what we hoped for,” Ms Fredriksz-hoogzand said.
“This is a start of it. It is a good start.” She added that she did not expect any of the accused to appear for the trial, due to begin on 9 March.
Russia’s foreign ministry dismissed the charges against Russian nationals as “absolutely unfounded”. It criticised the investigators for using “dubious sources of informa tion” and ignoring the evidence provided by Moscow in order to “discredit the Russian Federation”.
It noted that the international team turned a blind eye to Ukraine’s failure to close its airspace to commercial flights despite the fighting in the east.
The ministry said despite the investigators’ “bias”, Russia will cooperate with the probe to “help determine the truth”.
Yesterday the father of one of the ten Britons killed when the MH17 was downed said the prosecution could bring cloif grieving relatives found out why it happened.
Among the British passengers killed was Liam Sweeney, 28, who was travelling with his friend John Alder to see Newcastle United play in New Zealand.
His father, Barry Sweeney, 57, from North Tyneside, welcomed the development as a “step forward” while acknowledging the difficulty of seeing any of the suspects in court.
He said: “It’s not going to bring anyone back, but if I found out why it happened, it would bring a bit of closure.”
Mr Sweeney said Liam’s mother died two years ago and his own wife is in poor health but he hoped to go to the Netherlands to watch the trial.
He said: “I would like to go if I can, when I see all my friends out there, as they all know, it makes us stronger.”
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “The charges brought against these individuals today show that the international community stands together against the impunity of those responsible for the despicable murder of 298 innocent people.”