Truth Concealed, Revealed : Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
"We now have proof Russia was involved in this tragedy, this crime."
"One day after 17 July they were in a position to tell us exactly what happened. They knew."
"The Buk [missile] was used in eastern Ukraine and they know this. They didn't give us this information."
"These suspects are seen to have played an important role in the death of 298 innocent civilians."
"Although they did not push the button themselves, we suspect them of close co-operation to get the [missile launcher] where it was, with the aim to shoot down an airplane."
"[Investigators had] evidence showing that Russia provided the missile launcher."
Fred Westerbeke, chief prosecutor, Netherlands
"[I hope] those who are guilty of this brazen murder [shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17] of innocent children, woman and men will be put in the dock."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
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| An investigator inspects the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 Reuters |
"You know our position on this investigation. Russia had no chance to take part in it, even though from the very start -- the first days of this tragedy -- Russia... tried to be part of the investigation into this terrible catastrophe."Actually, yes. Moscow's position on the tragedy was well known; while denying any involvement whatsoever, the Kremlin accused Ukraine of shooting down the Malaysian Airlines passenger jet. The missile launcher, they asserted, came out of Ukraine's armoury. As for cooperation with the Joint Investigation Team, according to the Dutch authorities, there was no cooperation from Russia as their investigation wended its long way to a conclusion.
"So our position on this investigation is very well known."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov
The team of investigators -- comprised of detectives and prosecutors from the Netherlands (as the nation that suffered the greatest loss of innocent lives); Malaysia (whose passenger jet it was); Ukraine (in whose airspace the plane was shot down and on whose soil the shattered plane and its murdered passengers came to rest), along with Australia and Belgium -- stated their conviction that the Buk missile system involved in shooting down flight MH17 belonged to the Russian army's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile brigade, based in Kursk, Russian Republic.
The investigation now concluded, murder charges were announced by the international prosecutors on June 19 against three Russian citizens and one Ukrainian. When Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky five years ago, 298 people lost their lives. The dead passengers and crew represented 193 Dutch nationals, 43 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, 10 Britons, four Belgians, four Germans, three Philippine nationals, one New Zealander and one Canadian.
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The day following the shooting down of MH17 over the eastern provinces of Ukraine in 2014, the government of the United States had concluded a Russian-made surface-to-air missile launched from territory in eastern Ukraine held by ethnic Russian rebels brought the passenger jet down, killing all those aboard. The team of prosecutors from Ukraine and four other nations as well as private agencies subsequently documented the passage of a missile launcher from an active Russian military unit driven into eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian separatists were aiming to target Ukrainian government aircraft at lower altitudes than what commercial jetliners are accustomed to use. And they fired a Buk missile with the use of the Russian missile launcher at the passenger jet, bringing it down, committing a criminal act of major international injury. Now actual names and faces have been linked to that lethally destructive and deliberately murderous crash.
Acting on orders from Moscow according to the investigative conclusion, in Russia's proxy military conflict with its former satellite whose geographic sovereignty Russia was intent on purloining, the four named malefactors are to stand trial in a Dutch court in a trial to commence on March 9, 2020; a trial set to take place in the Netherlands in recognition of the fact that 193 of the 283 passengers -- aside from the 15 crew members -- were Dutch.
International arrest warrants have been issued. Intercepted telephone calls where the men discuss moving the missile launcher and the firing of the missile directly implicates them. Igor Girkin was a colonel in Russia's F.S.B. spy service; Sergey Dubinsky and Oleg Putatov served with the G.R.U. military intelligence agency and Leonid Kharchenko a Ukrainian leader of a rebel combat group in Donetsk. While none named fired the missile they "formed a chain" that linked the "Donetsk People's Republic" directly with Russia.
They brought the Russian missile system into eastern Ukraine making them criminally responsible for the murder of 298 people. And that criminal responsibility certainly extends to the source of the orders they were obeying -- Russia.
Labels: Donetsk, Mass Murder, MH17, Rebellion, Russia, Ukraine
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, July 04, 2019
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