Russia criticizes Hague court as 'selective' over MH17 plane case
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Russia says The Hague court was selective when it came to evidence pointing at Ukraine's culpability and ignored Russian evidence in the case of the shot-down MH17 airliner.
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The wreckage of the downed MH17 airliner
The Hague District Court found Russian citizens Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinskym, and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Karchenko guilty of the MH17 plane crash in eastern Ukraine in 2014, as well as the killing of 298 of its passengers, Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said on Thursday.
"The court found that Girkin, Dubinsky, and Kharchenko are accomplices in the crime. Thus, the court finds them guilty on two counts — destroying the MH17 plane and killing 298 of its passengers," Steenhuis announced, adding that the court sentenced the accused to life in prison.
The flight from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
The MH17 flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed near the city of Donetsk on July 17, 2014. All 298 passengers and crew members were killed.
Dutch court selective in terms of materials accepted
The Dutch, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, court selectively accepted materials in the MH17 case, which lead to the convictions.
"The court preferred to ignore the fact that all the conclusions of the Dutch prosecutor’s office were based on the testimony of anonymous witnesses whose identities were classified, as well as on information of dubious origin and materials transmitted from the interested party – the SBU, which has been caught more than once giving false conflicting information," the statement says.
The defense's argument about the lack of substantial evidence that the flight in question had been shot down by the Russian-made Buk air defense system was not taken into account, the Russian foreign ministry underlined.
"Only those materials were selected for analysis intended to confirm the version imposed by The Hague," the statement explained. "At the same time, documents declassified by the Russian Defense Ministry, indicating the transfer to Ukraine of a missile, the serial number of which matches that found on the wreckage at the crash site, were not taken into account."
The court, Moscow said, did not want to "find out in detail" the rocket's origin, noting that all the facts indicating that Ukrainian servicemen could have carried out the launch from Ukrainian-held territories "were simply ignored."
Additionally, the top Russian diplomatic body highlighted that data in Moscow's hand confirmed that the missile was launched from a Kiev-held area, though the data was not accepted by the court.
"Primary raw data from Russian radars, as well as the reports and results of a full-scale experiment transmitted by the Almaz-Antey concern, confirming that the missile was launched from an area under the control of the Kiev authorities, were not attached to the materials of the criminal case."
Meanwhile, "The same applies to the testimony of a number of important witnesses brought in by the defense," the ministry added.
As the court refused to take data provided by Russia, Ukraine refused to provide radar data and recordings of ground-based flight tracking services to the court, the Foreign Ministry explained, highlighting how the Ukrainian air traffic controllers who were working on the day of the incident "disappeared without a trace."
"A certain amount of clarity could be provided by satellite images of the United States taken on the day of the crash," the Russian Foreign Ministry suggested, though it noted that Washington had rebuffed requests made by the judges to disclose the data in question, or even to allow for the data to be viewed under special conditions.
It also underlined how during the proceedings, the issue of Kiev being responsible for its reluctance to close the airspace over an active combat zone was not properly discussed.
