Three convicted of murdering 298 people in flight MH17 case

A DUTCH court has convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist of the murders of 298 people who died in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine.

Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said evidence presented by prosecutors at a trial that lasted more than two years proved that the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was brought down by a Buk missile fired by pro-Moscow Ukrainian fighters on July 17, 2014.

One Russian was acquitted because of a lack of evidence. The three who were convicted were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Against the geopolitical upheaval caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the court also held that Moscow had overall control of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, from where it said the attack was launched.

The Hague District Court sat at a high-security courtroom at Schiphol Airport. Hundreds of family members of people killed had travelled to the court to hear the verdict, bringing them back to the airport their loved ones left on the fateful day MH17 was shot down.

The most senior defendant convicted is Igor Girkin, a 51-year-old former colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service. At the time of the downing, he was defence minister and commander of the armed forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic – the region where the plane was shot down.

Also convicted were Girkin’s subordinates, Sergey Dubinskiy and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian.