MH17 probe now turns to the perpetrators
Report confirms missile downed jet; questions remain
Investigators confirmed Tuesday that a Russian Buk missile shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, but what the probe failed to uncover is who shot the missile and why.
The missile attack on the civilian Boeing 777-200, shot down in broad daylight on July 17, 2014, killed 298 passengers and crew on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The Dutch Safety Board led the investigation because 193 of the 298 people killed were from the Netherlands.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team, which is building a criminal case, said the work to determine who shot the missile and why will stretch into 2016. The team said in a statement that it had found it difficult to locate and get statements from witnesses.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the country’s top priority is “tracking down and prosecuting those responsible.”
Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, said the world must ensure that “those responsible are held accountable for this murderous act.”
The investigation, made public Tuesday, found the missile exploded like a shotgun shell just outside the cockpit of MH17, killing three crewmembers immediately before breaking off the forward section of the plane. But the report didn’t specify who launched the missile or from where it had come.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the report vali- dated Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement more than a year ago that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched from territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists. Separatist leaders bragged “about shooting down an aircraft in the immediate aftermath of this tragic event,” Toner said.
Ukraine officials have also argued the missile came from Snizhne, a village under the control of Russian-backed separatists.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine at the time of the inci- dent, told USA TODAY that his country has known for a year that Russia shot down the plane.
The report did reveal what may have been an agonizing last few minutes for the passengers.
The explosion caused a “deafening noise,” the report said. The plane’s decompression, slowing down while breaking up, and then speeding up as it fell to the ground, “may have caused dizziness, nausea and loss of consciousness” among the passengers.
The temperature outside the plane was 40 degrees below zero. The powerful airflow from the plane’s speed as it descended apparently tore the clothes off some passengers.
“It cannot be ruled out that some occupants remained conscious for some time during the one to one and a half minutes for which the crash lasted,” the report said.