A Dutch court delivers its verdict Thursday in the trial of four men over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 above Ukraine in 2014, as tensions soar over Russia’s invasion eight years later.
The suspects — Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko — will not be in court as they have refused to attend the two-and-a-half-year trial.
They are charged with the murder of all 298 passengers and crew who died when the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was hit over separatist-held eastern Ukraine by what investigators say was a missile supplied by Moscow.
Prosecutors have demanded life sentences for the suspects although the men are unlikely to serve time if convicted.
The suspects were allegedly part of Kremlin-backed forces and had key roles in bringing the BUK missile from a military base in Russia and deploying it to the launch site — even if they did not pull the trigger.
Relatives have traveled from around the world to listen to the three-judge panel read out the verdict from 12:30 p.m. GMT at a high-security court near Schiphol Airport, where the doomed plane took off on July 17, 2014.
A Dutch court delivers its verdict Thursday in the trial of four men over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 above Ukraine in 2014, as tensions soar over Russia’s invasion eight years later.
The suspects — Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko — will not be in court as they have refused to attend the two-and-a-half-year trial.
They are charged with the murder of all 298 passengers and crew who died when the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was hit over separatist-held eastern Ukraine by what investigators say was a missile supplied by Moscow.
Prosecutors have demanded life sentences for the suspects although the men are unlikely to serve time if convicted.
The suspects were allegedly part of Kremlin-backed forces and had key roles in bringing the BUK missile from a military base in Russia and deploying it to the launch site — even if they did not pull the trigger.
Relatives have traveled from around the world to listen to the three-judge panel read out the verdict from 12:30 p.m. GMT at a high-security court near Schiphol Airport, where the doomed plane took off on July 17, 2014./themoscowtimes/
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