A third Russian was acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence.
After a trial that lasted more than two years, Judge Hendrik Steenhuis ruled that the evidence presented by the prosecutors showed that the Boeing 777 plane was indeed shot down by a missile fired by pro-Ukrainian rebels. -Moscow on July 17, 2014.
None of the defendants appeared in court in the trial, which began in March 2020. The suspects will have two weeks to appeal the verdict.
Cockpit of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 after it crashed in Ukraine. A Dutch court sentenced three of the four people accused in the tragedy on Thursday. The report by Lise Villeneuve.
Photo : Archyde.com / Antonio Bronic
The suspects were not charged with having fired the missile, but rather with having worked to bring it to the ground from which it was fired. They were accused of shooting down the plane and killing everyone on board – passengers and crew.
The oldest defendant is 51-year-old Igor Girkin, who is a former colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). At the time of the crash, he was defense minister and commander of the armed forces of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, the region from where the plane was shot down. Girkin is currently believed to be involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
His subordinates Sergey Dubinskiy and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian who prosecutors say was the commander of a pro-Russian rebel combat unit, were also found guilty.
Oleg Pulatovis, the only suspect who was acquitted, was represented by defense lawyers during the trial. They accused prosecutors of showing a vision en tunnel
basing their case on the findings of an international investigation into the accident while ignoring other possible causes.
