The decision comes greater than eight years after the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014, amid a battle between pro-Russia rebels and Ukrainian forces, killing 38 Australians and scattering wreckage and our bodies over farmland and fields of sunflowers.
Not one of the suspects appeared for the trial that started in March 2020 and if they’re convicted, it is unlikely they may serve any sentence anytime quickly.
Prosecutors have sought life sentences for all 4 and either side could have two weeks to file an enchantment.
The Hague District Courtroom, sitting at a high-security courtroom at Schiphol Airport, is passing judgment in opposition to a backdrop of worldwide geopolitical upheaval attributable to Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February and the almost nine-month warfare it triggered.
Lots of of members of the family of individuals killed travelled to the court docket to listen to the decision, bringing them again to the airport their family members left on the fateful day MH17 was shot down.
Dutch prosecutors say the missile launcher got here from the 53rd Anti-Plane Missile Brigade, a unit of the Russian armed forces primarily based within the Russian metropolis of Kursk and was pushed again there after MH17 was shot down.
The suspects aren’t accused of firing the missile however of working collectively to get it to the sector the place it was fired. They’re accused of bringing down the airplane and the homicide of all these on board.
Probably the most senior defendant is Igor Girkin, a 51-year-old former colonel in Russia’s Federal Safety Service, or FSB. On the time of the downing, he was defence minister and commander of the armed forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Folks’s Republic — the area the place the airplane was shot down. Girkin reportedly is at present concerned in Russia’s warfare on Ukraine.
Additionally on trial are Girkin’s subordinates, Sergey Dubinskiy, Oleg Pulatov, and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian who prosecutors say was commander of a pro-Russia insurgent fight unit and took orders straight from Dubinskiy.
Pulatov is the one one of many suspects who was represented by defence attorneys on the trial. They accused prosecutors of “tunnel imaginative and prescient” in basing their case on the findings of a global investigation into the downing whereas ignoring different potential causes.
Pulatov’s defence staff additionally sought to discredit proof and argued he did not get a good trial.
In a video recording performed in court docket, Pulatov insisted he was harmless.
“What issues to me is that the reality is revealed. It is necessary for me that my nation is just not blamed for this tragedy,” he advised judges.
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