Dutch prosecutors on Wednesday (December 22) demanded life imprisonment against the four men prosecuted for the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash over eastern Ukraine in 2014, accusing them of the murder of 298 people on board.
Read alsoRussia put under the spotlight at the trial of flight MH17
The Russians Sergei Dubinsky, Igor Guirkin and Oleg Poulatov, as well as the Ukrainian Leonid Khartchenko, four high-ranking pro-Russian separatists from eastern Ukraine, are accused of having shot down an MH17 flight with a ground missile. tune "
BUK
".
"
We demand that the suspects Guirkin, Dubinsky, Poulatov and Khartchenko, each for their responsibility in the crash of a plane which caused the death and murder of 298 people, be sentenced to life imprisonment
", told the judges prosecutor Manon Ridderbeks.
Moscow denies any involvement
Prosecutors said the four suspects played a central role in delivering a BUK anti-aircraft battery, presumably intended to strike a Ukrainian warplane. "
If that was their intention, it does not change the accusation of making it a criminal act,
" prosecutors said. Dutch law “
does not distinguish between military and civilian aircraft. Any violence against aviation must be severely punished,
”they stressed. The most famous suspect, Igor Guirkin, 49, nicknamed "
Strelkov
" ("
Gunman
Was one of the main separatist commanders at the start of the conflict with the Ukrainian army five years ago, and probably their most prominent representative at the time.
Sergei Dubinsky, 57, is said to be linked to Russian military intelligence.
Oleg Poulatov, 53, is a former member of the Russian special forces and deputy to Dubinsky.
Leonid Khartchenko, 48, is said to have led a separatist unit in eastern Ukraine.
"
The suspects used the
BUK missile" as their own weapon, underlined prosecutor Thijs Berger.
In hearings this week, Berger said the men on trial "
did not press the button themselves, but ... used it in their armed struggle to destroy a plane
."
Read also MH17 crash: the suspects "served their own military interests", according to Dutch prosecutors
None of the suspects made it to the trial, which started in March 2020 in the Netherlands. Only Poulatov is represented by lawyers. The hearings come against a backdrop of growing Russian-Western tensions around Ukraine. Americans and Europeans accuse Moscow of preparing a military offensive there. Kiev has been fighting a pro-Moscow insurgency in two breakaway regions bordering Russia since 2014, when the Kremlin annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. An international team of investigators says the plane was shot down over the area of armed conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine by a missile brought from a Russian military base, probably in order to fight against the Ukrainian forces. Moscow has always denied any involvement.The verdict of the Schiphol court, near Amsterdam and located a stone's throw from the airport from where the tragically fated Boeing took off, is not expected before the end of 2022.
