Dutch charge 4 in plane crash
Flight shot down in 2014 over Ukrainian rebel area
After a five-year inquiry, Dutch-led investigators said Wednesday that they will charge four suspects – three Russians and a Ukrainian – with murder in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over rebel-held eastern Ukraine, which killed 298 people.
The Boeing 777 was flying over territory held by pro-Russia separatists in July 2014 when it was shot down by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile. The flight was en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam on a path that took it over eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russia rebels and Ukrainian soldiers were fighting. The victims included 193 Dutch citizens.
The four suspects were all leaders of a breakaway People’s Republic of Donetsk, set up by rebels in eastern Ukraine.
At a news conference at The Hague, Netherlands, Dutch National Police Chief Wilbert Paulissen identified the suspects as Sergey Dubinsky, a former Russian intelligence officer who was head of intelligence for the breakaway republic in 2014; Oleg Pulatov, Dubinsky’s deputy; Igor Girkin, the defense chief of the rebel republic and a former Russian intelligence colonel; and Leonid Kharchenko, head of a battalion of insurgents linked to the missile that shot down the plane.
Girkin told the Russian Interfax news agency he would not testify in the case and said his military was not responsible for the plane crash. Dubinsky told The Guardian he did not believe the investigation was objective.
The inquiry was carried out by the Joint Investigation Team, or JIT, which is made up of detectives and prosecutors from the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine.
It remains unclear who actually pushed the button to launch the missile.
International warrants were issued for the suspects’ arrest, Paulissen said. The case is set to begin March 9 in a highly secure courtroom in The Hague.
Asked how likely it is that the suspects will report to the courtroom next year, chief public prosecutor Fred Westerbeke told Dutch TV NOS, “I am a realist and don’t think the odds are high.”
Still, he said, “in the short term, we will ask Russia to hand the summons to the suspects.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it regrets the “absolutely hollow” claims by the JIT that Russian servicemen were involved in the incident, Interfax reported. Russia has denied responsibility and claimed last year that the missile came from Ukrainian army arsenals.
“The statements made by the Joint Investigation Team in the course of their press conference ... provoke nothing but pity,” the statement read.