A Dutch court on Thursday found two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist guilty of mass murder for their involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Igor Girkin, a former colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and Sergei Dubinsky, who worked for Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, were convicted along with Ukrainian separatist Leonid Kharchenko, who is believed to have led a combat unit in Donetsk in July. 2014.
The three were jailed for life and ordered to pay victims more than €16m, but as the convictions were handed down in absentia, none of them are likely to serve their sentences. A fourth suspect, Russian national Oleg Pulatov, a former soldier of the Russian Spetsnaz-GRU special forces, was acquitted.
“Causing the crash of flight MH17 and the murders of all on board is such a serious charge, the consequences are so devastating and the defendant’s attitude so reprehensible, that a limited term of imprisonment will not suffice,” the court said. he said after the verdict.
Flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, when it was shot out of the sky over territory held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. All 298 on board were killed, including 15 crew members and 283 passengers from 17 countries.
The downing of the plane occurred in the early phase of the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, a precursor to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
Thursday’s verdict, which follows a two-year trial at the high-security Schiphol court complex in Badhoevedorp, marks the first time an independent verdict has been handed down in the incident and may offer some modicum of justice for the victims’ families.
The case has become more important in light of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, which is now almost in its ninth month. A legal expert told Reuters the ruling could affect other cases involving Russia, including one at the United Nations’ top court, the International Court of Justice.
The verdict comes weeks after Moscow tried to illegally annex four Ukrainian territories, including the area where the court said the missile that downed MH17 was fired eight years earlier. It also comes two days after a missile landed in Poland, raising fears that Russia’s attack on Ukraine could spread to neighboring countries.
The court found that flight MH17 was hit by a Russian Buk missile fired from farmland outside a village in eastern Ukraine held at the time by pro-Russian rebels controlled by Moscow, and that the missile system had been flown back to Russia after the strike.
The three convicts played a key role in transporting the Buk system and its crew to Ukraine, the court ruled, although it found there was insufficient evidence to determine who fired the missile.
Presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis said the court had found that the missile launch at MH17 was a premeditated act intended to bring down a plane – and while the crew probably believed they were shooting at a military aircraft, it would have been “perfectly clear” that no one on board any targeted aircraft would not survive.
“A Buk weapon system is designed to shoot down aircraft and cannot just be used randomly. Such a deployment requires preparation, including identifying and transporting to a launch site. Launching the missile must be very deliberate and carefully thought out according to a technical procedure and requires a highly trained crew. The probability of survival of people in an aircraft from a Buk missile attack is zero. Anyone who uses a specialized, expensive weapon like the Buk TELAR will know this,” the court said in a statement.
The court also held that because the defendants were not official parties to the conflict and thus lacked combatant immunity, they were not permitted to shoot down any aircraft, military or civilian.
Moscow has repeatedly denied any responsibility for the attack, and Russian officials and state media have offered a series of often contradictory explanations for the tragedy.
But on Thursday, Steenhuis cited a range of evidence for the court’s verdict and ruled out any alternative explanations for the incident.
Evidence examined by the court included fragments of a Buk missile found embedded in the aircraft and the bodies of some victims, wiretapping and witness statements, and videos and images of the scene and a Buk system brought to eastern Ukraine from Russia. and then back again.
Convicted persons have the right to appeal. Moscow described the verdict as “politically motivated” and said it would not extradite the convicted Russians to the Netherlands.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the verdict an important moment for accountability. “Holding the masterminds to account is also vital, as impunity leads to new crimes. We must dispel this illusion. Punishment for all [Russia’s] the atrocities then and now are inevitable,” he tweeted.
Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken said the United States welcomed the court’s decision, but that there was more work to be done.
“While this is a solid step toward justice, more work awaits to satisfy the UN Security Council’s demand in Resolution 2166 that ‘those responsible… be held accountable,'” Blinken said in a statement.
