The prosecution demands to sentence four persons involved in the  Malaysian Airlines plane crash  – Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Leonid Kharchenko – to life imprisonment. This was announced by a representative of the Dutch prosecutor’s office during the announcement of the indictment in the MH17 case. The reading of the document lasted three days.

“The actions of the accused not only took the lives of 298 people, they left deep scars in the souls of the living – the relatives of the victims and residents of the settlements near which the MH17 crash took place. No punishment for the accused will be fair, “the BBC quotes the words of the prosecutor.

The charges in the case of the Boeing MH17 crash were brought against the Russians Igor Girkin (Strelkov), Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and the Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko in June 2019. The suspects were identified on the basis of recordings of more than 150 thousand telephone conversations between the Donbass separatists and the Russian military, intercepted by the Security Service of Ukraine. The investigation believes that none of the accused personally participated in the launch of the Buk on the Boeing.

Court hearings began in the Netherlands in March 2020. The accused are tried in absentia. Only one of them, Pulatov, agreed to interact with the court by recording a video interview for the judges.

(C)MEDUZA 2021