The Netherlands Prosecutor’s Office confirmed Thursday that it will not appeal the life sentence of two Russian and one Ukrainian nationals for the July 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 after it was hit by a Russian-made missile as it passed through an occupied area of the Donetsk region.
«The prosecution is very satisfied that the judgment has clarified the actual circumstances of the relatives surrounding the downing of flight MH17,» Dutch authorities have welcomed the ruling issued in early November after several years of litigation.
The Prosecutor’s Office has highlighted how the court in The Hague that handled the case «considers it legally and reliably proven» that the plane was shot down by Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko. All three were sentenced to life imprisonment ‘in absentia’.
In the case of the fourth person involved, Oleg Pulatov, the Prosecutor’s Office has accepted the court’s decision that he bears no criminal responsibility for the tragedy, although he was aware of the deployment of the ‘Buk’ system used to bring down the plane.
However, it has decided to refrain from appealing as it believes that further litigation could place «a great burden on the relatives» as they would be «left in uncertainty about the outcome of the case».
«The current judgments provide certainty to the relatives on a number of important issues. In addition, the judgments contain clear considerations on the evidentiary value of witness and expert statements, visual material, intercepted conversations, and on the nature of the armed conflict that was ongoing in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 and the Russian role in this,» he says.
In mid-November, a court in The Hague sentenced Girkin, Dubinsky, Kharchenko — as they are on Russian territory and Russian authorities refuse to hand them over — to life imprisonment ‘in absentia’ for the murder of the 298 people on board Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014 covering the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur route.
The court has confirmed that the plane was hit by a Russian-made missile that was allegedly launched from a territory located in Pervomaisk, a Russian-controlled area of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
