MH17 downing trial: Prosecutor demands lifetime for four suspects
In the Dutch court, during a hearing in the MH17 case, the prosecutor asked the judges to classify the actions of the four defendants as aircraft destruction, which provides for life imprisonment.
As an Ukrinform correspondent reports, the statement came today as the prosecutors continue to voice the indictment in the Schiphol court complex.
"We consider Girkin, Dubinskiy, Pulatov, and Kharchenko guilty of destroying Flight MH17 and killing 298 people. They deserve a long sentence," Dutch prosecutor Theis Berger said in his speech.
He stressed that the Buk missile downed a passenger jet Flight MH17. The bodies fell from great altitudes and their remains remained at the site of the crash for weeks and months before the authorities were able to retrieve them.
"The war and the fact that they (the accused - ed.) possibly sought to shoot down a warplane are not mitigating circumstances. They organized transportation and deployment of the Buk launcher. They posed a threat to civil aviation," the prosecutor stressed.
He stressed that those accused had committed a destructive and planned act of violence.
"The article on the destruction of aircraft, which provides for life imprisonment and does not differentiate between civilian and military aircraft, is the most suitable for them," he said.
As reported by Ukrinform, the Dutch prosecutors, presenting the indictment, said that the inquiry had not revealed any traces of other weapons that could destroy the passenger plane in 2014, except for the Buk.
The Buk’s deployment route was also shown in court. In particular, in the video made on the morning of July 18, 2014, the launcher was spotted near the city of Luhansk (non-government-controlled) carrying no missiles. After that, the Buk was transported back to Russia.
According to investigators, the launcher was returned to Russia by Girkin’s order, with the participation of Dubinskiy, Kharchenko, and Pulatov.
As reported, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over the occupied area of Donetsk region on July 17, 2014. There were 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board. All of them died. The international Joint Investigation Team reported that the plane had been shot down from a Buk missile system that belonged to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces stationed in Kursk.
On June 19, 2019, the JIT named four suspects believed to be involved in the transportation and combat use of the Buk missile system, from which MH17 flight had been downed. Three of them are Russians: Igor Girkin (Strelkov), former colonel in Russia's FSB intelligence service and former so-called defense minister of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic"; Sergey Dubinskiy, general (at the time of downing – colonel) of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and head of the so-called "Main Intelligence Directorate of the Donetsk People’s Republic"; Oleg Pulatov, lieutenant colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. The fourth suspect is Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian civilian, who fought on the side of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic.
In March 2020, the District Court of The Hague began the consideration of the case over the downing of Flight MH17.
Photo: Iryna Drabok, Ukrinform
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