The Dutch court’s ruling was based on partisan evidence while Moscow’s arguments were discarded, the latter says
The Thursday decision taken by the Dutch court on the MH17 crash was absolutely political, Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Earlier that day the court found three people guilty of downing the Malaysian passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014.
Earlier on Thursday, a court in the Hague found two Russian nationals – Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinsky – as well as a Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko guilty of downing the MH17 flight. All the three were sentenced to life in prison in absentia. Apart from that, Girkin, Dubinsky and Kharchenko will be liable for more than 16 million euros in compensatory damages to the victims’ families.
The Dutch court was “under unprecedented pressure” during the hearings, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated, commenting on the verdict. “There can be no talk of objectivity and impartiality under such circumstances,” it added, pointing to the attempts by the Dutch “politicians, prosecutors and media to impose a politically motivated verdict” in this case.
The court’s decision was based on the conclusions of the Dutch prosecutors, which, in turn, were built upon the accounts of anonymous witnesses and evidence presented by the Ukrainian Security Service, which is “an interested party” in this case, the ministry argued. Arguments presented by the Russian side, including that data declassified by the Russian Defense Ministry were discarded, it added.
The Russian military earlier published documents that a missile bearing a similar serial number to the one that was found at the MH17 crash site was previously handed over to Ukraine.
The fact that Kiev failed to close the airspace over the conflict zone before the tragedy did not get a proper legal assessment either, the foreign ministry argued.
“We deeply regret the fact that the Hague district court disregarded the principle of impartiality of justice in favor of the current political situation,” the ministry’s statement read.
On Thursday, the Dutch court ruled that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian made BUK air defense missile from a field in near the village of Pervomayskoe. Once a town in eastern Ukraine, Pervomayskoe became part of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) after it declared independence from Ukraine in 2014. The DPR joined Russia following a referendum this autumn.
At the time of the tragedy Pervomayskoe was controlled by the DPR militias, according to the verdict.
While the three men were found guilty, the court acquitted the fourth suspect – a Russian national identified as Oleg Pulatov.
The court verdict came more than eight years after the tragedy. A Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over the Donetsk region on July 17, 2014.
Moscow and Kiev traded blame over the incident in the wake of the tragedy. A Joint Investigation Team that was tasked with investigating the MH17 crash included officials from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine but not Russia.
Russia’s Almaz Antey, the producer of the Buk system, released its own analysis of the incident. The company concluded that the plane was shot down by an older version of the Buk missile, which was not used by Russia but remained in service in the Ukrainian military.
https://ift.tt/UNuZw0e 17, 2022 at 10:27PM
from RT – Daily news
