Three of the four suspects in the attack, which killed 298 people, have been sentenced to life imprisonment
A court in the Netherlands has sentenced three of the four suspects in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 to life imprisonment and has confirmed that the plane was hit by a Russian-made ‘Buk’ missile. launched from an area in Pervomaisk, Lugansk region, in Donbas.
The court has ruled that Russian defendants Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky, as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, are guilty of the murder of 298 people by participating in the supply, deployment and removal of the ‘Buk’ system used to to bring down the plane. Most of the deceased were of Dutch descent, followed by Malaysian and Australian citizens. The flight covered the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur route.
The fourth suspect, Oleg Pulatov, a Russian citizen, has been acquitted because it cannot be proven that he ordered the missile to be fired, the Algemeen Dagblad reported.
In addition, the judges have explained that they will have to compensate the relatives of the victims. “Suffering cannot be expressed in money. 290 people filed claims for damages between 40,000 and 50,000 euros. Girkin, Dubinsky and Jarchenko have been ordered to pay damages of more than 16 million euros,” they pointed out.
The Public Prosecution Service had demanded life sentences for the four men, but in the end they were only sentenced in three of the cases. The practical application of these sentences seems remote, insofar as Russia has ruled out extradition and is in fact represented in the Pulatov trial only through its lawyers.
Earlier, the judges had confirmed that the missile that hit the plane was a ‘Buk’ launched from a farm that killed 283 passengers and 15 crew members, judge Hendrik Steenhuis said.
The judges have thus concluded that there is sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that the missile was Russian and was launched from said area, which would then be under the control of pro-Russian forces.
Although the Netherlands and Australia have admitted that “holding a country accountable is a complicated legal process”, they believe that Moscow is responsible for the incident because of the “role” it played. However, authorities have always denied anything to do with the Malaysia Airlines plane tragedy.
Source: La Verdad
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