AMSTERDAM: Dutch judges on Thursday convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian of murder for their role in the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine, and sentenced them to life in prison. A fourth man, a Russian, was acquitted.

The MH17 was a passenger flight that was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

“Only the most severe punishment is fitting to retaliate for what the suspects have done, which has caused so much suffering to so many victims and so many surviving relatives,” presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis said, reading a summary of the ruling.

Families of victims stood weeping and wiping away tears in the courtroom as Steenhuis read the verdict.

The three men convicted were former Russian intelligence agents Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian separatist leader.

A fourth, Russian Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted on all charges. At the time, the area was the scene of fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, the precursor of this year’s conflict.

Russia annexed the Donetsk province, where the plane’s wreckage and victims’ remains were once scattered across cornfields, after the invasion this year.

Suspects in Russia?

Victims’ representatives said the ruling is an important milestone, though the suspects remain fugitives. They are all believed to be in Russia, which will not extradite them.

Moscow denies any involvement or responsibility for MH17’s downing and in 2014 it also denied any presence in Ukraine.

In a briefing in Moscow on Thursday, Deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Ivan Nechaev told reporters the government would examine the court’s findings.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2022