Russian military disputes Dutch MH17 probe
- by Leah Brady
- in Worldwide
- — Sep 29, 2016
A Russian missile fired from a Russian launcher in territory controlled by Russia-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine in 2014 brought down flight Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 298 civilians, a new global investigative report has revealed.
"Our investigation has shown that the location from where the BUK was sacked was in the hands of the Russian separatists", said Wilbert Paulissen, the head of the JIT, in a news conference held in the central Dutch city of Nieuwegein.
Among the 298 people killed after the Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile exploded next to Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17, 2014, were 38 who called Australia home. The goal of the criminal investigation is to establish the facts, identify those responsible for the crash and to collect evidence which can be used in court.
Moscow officials have consistently denied allegations that pro-Kremlin rebels in eastern Ukraine were responsible for downing the passenger plane.
At the conference in the Netherlands, Paulissen reportedly said that a farmland 3.7 miles from the village "can be pointed out as the launch site without any doubt".
The investigators said it was sacked from a field in a part of eastern Ukraine under the control of pro-Russia separatists. These findings are to prepare the ground for a criminal trial. Zakharova said she hoped new radar data presented by the Russian military would prompt the prosecutors to revise their findings.
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She suggested that Ukraine had been allowed to forge evidence, while the manufacturer of the Buk antiaircraft missile, Almaz Antey, alleged that investigators ignored information they had shared.
The JIT report said that the team is "convinced of having obtained irrefutable evidence to establish that on 17 July 2014, flight MH17 was shot down by a BUK missile from the 9M38-series". "If there was a rocket, it could only have been fired from elsewhere", he said. Most of the passengers - 193 people - were Dutch nationals. Russian Federation a year ago vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have established an worldwide criminal tribunal to investigate the downing of the plane.
The Kremlin said, before the Wednesday report's findings were announced, that it has new radio-location data that show the missile couldn't have been fired from rebel territory.
The Russian maker of the Buk missile system also contested the conclusions of the investigation.
Numerous families have, however, expressed their frustration over the fact that after two years, the investigators still can't tell them who was responsible and why. We'll update this story when details of the report become known.
He added that afterwards the missile launcher system "was taken back to Russian Federation".
