MH17 trial won’t be postponed due to coronavirus

17.03.2020 15:25

Ukrinform

The court proceedings in MH17 crash case will be resumed in the Netherlands on March 23 and will not be postponed due to coronavirus outbreak.

“MH17 criminal proceedings will continue as planned but in an adapted form. It is not possible for relatives, the press, the public and other interested parties to attend this hearing at the JCS or in the NBC in Nieuwegein,” an Ukrinform correspondent in The Hague reports with reference to the press service of the court.

The hearing may, however, be viewed by livestream on the www.courtmh17.com website

The first hearings in the MH17 criminal proceedings took place on 9 and 10 March 2020.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over conflict-hit Donbas in July 2014. There were 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board. All of them died. The JIT reported that the plane had been shot down from a Buk missile system that belongs to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces stationed in Kursk.

In May 2018, the Netherlands and Australia formally accused Russia of being responsible for the downing of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet.

On June 19, 2019, the international Joint Investigation Team 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.”

None of them was present at the court hearing. The interests of Pulatov are represented by the lawyers.