The Hague, Netherlands — An international team of investigators has named four key suspects as it builds a criminal case against those responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The joint investigation announced the progress nearly five years after the plane was blown out of the sky above conflict-torn eastern Ukraine.
Members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said in The Hague on Wednesday that three Russian nationals and one Ukrainian would be charged with murder over the attack on the civilian jet. They are suspected of facilitating the transport of the missile used to shoot down the jet from Russia into Ukraine. Chief Dutch Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke also said investigators “have evidence showing that Russia provided the missile launcher” used in the 2014 attack.
The Dutch-led probe identified the suspects as Russian nationals Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Oleg Pulatov, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko. The investigators said the Ukrainian suspect was believed to be in Ukraine, but it was unclear whether the man was in the eastern part of the country still controlled by Russian-backed separatists.All 298 passengers and crew on the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed on July 17, 2014, when a missile shattered the Boeing 777 in midair, sending debris and bodies raining down onto farms and fields of sunflowers.The families of those killed were informed of developments in a private meeting ahead of the news conference by investigators. “This is what we hoped for,” Silene Fredriksz-Hoogzand, whose son Bryce and his girlfriend Daisy Oehlers were among the dead, said after the meeting. “This is a start of it. It is a good start.”She added that she did not expect any of the suspects to appear for the trial, due to begin in a Dutch court on March 9.The Buk missileThe investigation team, made up of detectives and prosecutors from the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine, last year said that it was convinced that the Buk missile system used to shoot down flight MH17 came from the Russian army’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile brigade, based in the Russian city of Kursk.Russia has always denied responsibility for shooting down the flight and claimed last year that the Buk missile came from Ukrainian army arsenals. The Netherlands and Australia have said they hold Moscow responsible for providing the Buk missile system used in the downing.