MH17 trial: Hearing lasts less than hour, next scheduled for June 8

"The court decided to postpone the decision on additional investigations until the hearing, which will begin on June 8, 2020," head judge Hendrik Steenhuis said, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

He stated that the defense and the prosecution would be able to raise their preliminary objections and requests for additional investigation on June 8, 2020, at 10:00 local time. He also noted that the relatives of the victims asked the court for access to the case files.

"The court ruled that a large number of documents and files had been collected during the criminal investigation of the case, which began on July 17, 2014 and continued up to this day. The defense noted that it had managed only recently to get these files, which include about 36,000 pages and a large number of multimedia files, and was unable to fully study this information. So the defense will be able to review and prepare its position for a hearing on June 8, 2020, or later," the judge said.

According to him, it is not possible to consider the case in more detail at this stage. The judge also noted that relatives of crash victims would be granted access to materials but would be forbidden from making copies, discussing the contents with anyone other than clients.

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.

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