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A cross in eastern Ukraine commemorates the dead at the crash site
Photo: Alessandro Guerra/EPA
The holiday airline was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when a Russian anti-aircraft missile brought down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
298 people were killed in the attack on July 17, 2014.
Now a court in the Netherlands has sentenced three of the four accused pro-Russian separatists to life imprisonment in absentia.
They should also pay at least 16 million euros to the relatives of the victims.
Those convicted are ex-intelligence officer Sergei Dubinsky and pro-Russian rebel commander Igor Girkin.
There is also the Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, who was a rebel commander in Donetsk.
Oleg Pulatov, also a rebel officer, was acquitted.
The defendants were not in the Netherlands and refused to appear in court there.
Only Pulatov had lawyers represent him in court.
Presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis said only the harshest punishment was appropriate for what the accused had done.
You would have done the victims and their families so much suffering.
Relatives of the victims wept in the courtroom as Steenhuis read the decision.
BUK missile hit MH17
There is enough evidence that MH17 was hit by a BUK surface-to-air missile and that it crashed, the court found.
The photos, videos, debris and satellite imagery left no reasonable doubt.
The theory that a Ukrainian missile hit the plane has been refuted.
According to the court, the three convicts were instrumental in positioning the BUK missile in eastern Ukraine.
Wiretapped telephone calls were among the most important pieces of evidence in the trial.
Russia has denied any involvement or responsibility in the plane's crash.
more on the subject
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Start of the MH17 trial: Who shot? Christina Hebe and Alexander Sarovic report from Amsterdam and Moscow
The trial against the separatists has been under high security since March 2020 near Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, from where the Malaysia Airlines plane took off for Kuala Lumpur at the time.
Most of the fatalities came from the Netherlands.
The public prosecutor's office had already demanded last December that the four accused of murder be sentenced to life imprisonment.
"The accused took the lives of 298 people in a cruel manner," prosecutor Thijs Berger said at the time.
Court: Russia exercised control over separatists
In the run-up to the verdict, the relatives were also hoping for answers to the question of what Russia had to do with the shooting down.
The court has now found that Russia exercised control over the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine during the period in question.
Among other things, there were regular contacts with the Russian leadership, the Kremlin provided military support to the militias and gave instructions.
However, the accused were not Russian soldiers, so they did not have a right to immunity as combatants.
On Twitter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke of an important decision.
It is important to hold people accountable because the sense of impunity breeds new crimes.
"We must dispel this illusion," Zelenskyy wrote.
mrc/slu/Reuters/dpa