By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 1 hour ago, Updated 1 hour ago
Reconstruction of the MH17 aircraft in 2021. Peter Dejong / POOL / AFP
The investigation concerns the identity of those who fired the missile that shot down a plane over Ukraine in 2014.
International investigators have said they will announce the results of an investigation next month into “other parties” involved in the crash of flight MH17, after three people were found guilty last year.
The findings are said to address their investigations into who actually fired the missile that shot down the plane over eastern Ukraine in 2014 and who originally supplied the Russian-made projectile.
“Scandalous” verdict
The two Russians and the Ukrainian, who were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in absentia by a Dutch court in November, were found not guilty of pulling the trigger, only of helping to launch the rocket into Ukraine bring to. During a news conference in The Hague on February 8, investigators will announce the “results of the ongoing investigation into the other parties involved in the downing of flight MH17,” the international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said in a statement.
The relatives of the victims would be informed as a matter of priority, she said. “In addition to the involvement of the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic), the JIT also investigated the crew of BUK-TELAR and those responsible for the delivery of this Russian weapon system that shot down MH17,” she added.
Also read Flight MH17 crash: Russia denounces “scandalous” verdict, Zelenskyi welcomes “important decision”
Dutch judges concluded that Russians Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko were members of the separatist DPR and that the group was controlled by Moscow, but it was not clear who actually used the BUK missile system when the plane was shot down.
All 298 passengers and crew were killed when the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur plane was hit over pro-Russian separatist-held eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. The JIT includes members from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine, the countries hardest hit by the crash.
Moscow denied any involvement and called the verdict “scandalous”. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on Wednesday declared the majority of the claims brought against it by the Netherlands over the MH17 crash to be “admissible”.
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