THE HAGUE – International investigators said they will next month unveil the result of a probe into “other parties: involved in downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, after three people were found guilty last year.
The findings are expected to deal with their research into who actually fired the missile that shot down the plane over eastern Ukraine in 2014, and who originally supplied the Russian-made projectile.
The two Russians and a Ukrainian sentenced to life in absentia for murder by a Dutch court in November were not found to have fired the trigger, but only to have helped bring the missile into Ukraine.
But now at a press conference in The Hague on February 8, investigators will reveal the “results of the ongoing investigation into other parties involved in the downing of flight MH17”, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said in a statement.
Relatives of the victims would be informed first, it said.
“In addition to the involvement of the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic), the JIT also investigated the crew of the Buk-TELAR and those responsible for supplying this Russian weapon system that downed MH17.”
Dutch judges found 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.
Judges, however, said it was not clear who had actually operated the BUK missile system when the plane was shot down.
All 298 people on board the plane were killed when it was shot down over separatist-held eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.
Russia has denied any involvement in the shooting down of the plane, or in controlling the separatists.
The JIT comprises members from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine, the countries worst affected by the crash of the doomed Boeing 777.
European rights judges in Strasbourg on Monday separately ruled that most of the complaints lodged by the Netherlands over MH17 were admissible. – AFP, January 26, 2023
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