All 298 people on board died, 196 of them Dutch, as well as 43 Malaysians and 38 Australians.
Paris:
The world reacted with horror 10 years ago when Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over war-torn eastern Ukraine while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
The fall came in the early stages of a war in which Moscow seized the Crimean peninsula from Kiev and fueled an insurgency by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
What happened?
The doomed flight took off from Amsterdam on a sunny summer day on July 17, 2014.
Among the passengers were Dutch HIV/AIDS specialist Joep Lange, on his way to a conference in Melbourne, and Jeroen and Nicole Wals and their four children, who were on holiday in Malaysia.
At 4:19 pm (1:19 pm GMT), while flying over the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatist rebels were fighting Ukrainian forces, the plane exploded in mid-air at an altitude of 33,000 feet (10.1 kilometers).
All 298 people on board died, 196 of them Dutch, as well as 43 Malaysians and 38 Australians.
A later reconstruction of the jet using some of the wreckage revealed the horror of the plane’s last moments.
“The forward section of the aircraft was penetrated by hundreds of high-energy objects coming from the warhead,” an international investigation led by the Netherlands heard.
“As a result of the impact and subsequent explosion, the three crew members in the cabin died immediately and the plane broke up in mid-air.”
Investigators said some of the passengers may have known for up to 90 seconds that they were about to die.
Who was held responsible?
Russia and Ukraine immediately traded blame for the plane crash.
The international investigation in 2016 found “irrefutable evidence” that the plane was shot down by a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile system, which was transported from Russia to separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine.
Investigators later determined that the missile originated from a Russian military brigade based in the western city of Kursk.
Russia denied that any anti-aircraft missiles crossed the border.
In June 2019, four senior figures from the self-styled rebel Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov of Russia, and Leonid Kharchenko of Ukraine were charged with murder.
They were accused of taking the missile system to the launch site in eastern Ukraine (but not of actually pushing the button).
Investigators said there were “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the supply of the missile.
Has anyone been convicted?
After a two-and-a-half-year trial, a Dutch court in November 2022 convicted Girkin, Dubinsky and Kharchenko in absentia of murder and intentionally provoking a plane crash and sentenced them to life in prison.
The three refused to participate in the legal proceedings or acknowledge their role in the incident.
Pulatov was acquitted.
Russia rejected the court’s verdict as politically motivated.
In January 2024, Girkin was imprisoned for four years in Russia for repeatedly criticizing the Kremlin for not pursuing a more aggressive offensive in Ukraine.
In 2023, investigators into the MH17 crash suspended their work, claiming there was not enough evidence to prosecute any more suspects.
Was justice served?
An investigation against Russia is still ongoing at the International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN agency.
The Netherlands and Ukraine have also jointly initiated proceedings against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
In the Netherlands, however, hope is fading that any of those responsible will be brought to justice.
“In the end, we were unable to put anyone behind bars,” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof told public broadcaster NOS on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the disaster.
“That sense of justice exists, but ultimately it’s not how it should be,” he added.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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