Two Russian soldiers, and a separatist Ukrainian, were condemned in absentia in perpetuity prison, eight years after the shooting of a Russian missile against a civil plane over Ukraine which made 298 victims.
by Jean-Pierre Stroobants (Brussels, European office)
Three perpetuity convictions, a acquittal: the Dutch court responsible for examining the dossier for the destruction of the MHH17 flight of Malaysia Airlines over Ukraine, in July 2014, which resulted in the death of 298 passengers And crew members, returned his verdict, Thursday, November 17. It took this and a half years and 68 audiences for this.
Immediately, Volodymyr Zelensky praised an “important decision” of the Hague Court. “Today’s verdict sends a message to Russia: no lie can help escape justice, reacted the Ukrainian president on Twitter. Punishment for all Russian atrocities, both yesterday and D ‘Today, will be inevitable. “
Four men, three Russians and one Ukrainian, was among the ghost defendants of this trial started in March 2020. We have never seen them in Badhoevedorp, in the suburbs of Amsterdam, where the special court sat: they refused Any appearance and have been judged in abstentia. Only one, Russian Oleg Poulato, 56, will have been represented by a lawyer and will have delivered a video declaration to deny any involvement in the disaster. An apparently paying strategy: the Court judged that its responsibility in fact was not fully established and estimated that it should be acquitted. The prosecution should, in principle, appeal this decision.
eighty children killed
At the time of the facts, Oleg Polatov was an officer of the Russian special forces and the assistant of a second defendant, Sergei Doubinski, 60, ex-Russian military intelligence (GRU). The latter, veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and in Chechnya then led the military information of the self -proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk (RPD), in Donbass. Ukrainian Leonid Khartchenko, 50, also under the orders of Doubinski, commanded a combat unit of separatists.
The fourth defendant, Igor Guirkine, 51, a colonel of the SVR, the Russian intelligence service, played the role of Minister of Defense and Commander of the RPD. The judges appointed him as the main organizer of the operation which led to the death of the 298 people. And, like his two companions, he was sentenced to perpetuity detention. All three are also ordered to compensate the families of the victims up to 16 million euros.
The occupants of flight Amsterdam -Kuala Lumpur – including 80 children – were of ten different nationalities but the Netherlands paid the heaviest tribute, with 193 nationals killed. A drama “barely conceivable” had commented, during the start of the trial, Hendrik Steenhuis, the president of the court. “The end, in a horrible way, of existence which, sometimes, had barely started,” he said Thursday, in front of a room where an intense emotion reigned.
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