Trial in Malaysian plane downing resumes in Netherlands

By Selman Aksunger

AMSTERDAM (AA) – The trial of four men charged with the 2014 downing of flight MH17, killing all the 298 passengers on board, resumed Monday at the high-security courtroom at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in Netherlands, with three days of hearings focusing on the evidence, Anadolu Agency correspondent reported.

The four suspects, three Russians and one Ukrainian, are charged with causing the crash of flight MH17, which resulted in the death of all the passengers on board.

Of the suspects, only Oleg Pulatov has retained a counsel, rejecting charges.

“My client did not have any role in the downing of flight MH17,” counselor Sabine Ten Doesschate told the court.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. All the 298 people on board were killed, including 196 Dutch citizens. Multiple investigations showed that the plane was shot down with a Buk surface-to-air missile system from 53rd anti-aircraft brigade of the Russian armed forces, fired from a field in eastern Ukraine that was in the hands of pro-Russian separatists at the time.

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) also identified four men – Sergey Dubinskiy, Oleg Pulatov, Igor Girkin, and Leonid Kharchenko – as involved in the downing of the passenger plane.

Dubinsky was reportedly a former Russian intelligence officer who in 2014 acted as the head of the intelligence service for the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). Pulatov was Dubinsky's second in command. Both played an important role in the transport of the missile that shot down MH17, according to the JIT. Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer, was DNR’s defense minister. And Kharchenko was head of a battalion that was active in the area from where the missile was fired.

The criminal trial against these first four suspects officially started on March 9, 2020. The process surrounding the downing of MH17 is colossal, with the criminal case file comprising over 40,000 pages and thousands of multimedia files.

* Writing and contributing by Ahmet Gencturk in Ankara