Flight MH17: Four charged in Netherlands over shooting down of plane over Ukraine
Three Russians and one Ukrainian have been charged with murder in the Netherlands over the downing of flight MH17 in July 2014 with the loss of 298 lives.
Dutch National Police chief Wilbert Paulissen identified Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov, along with Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, as suspects in the downing of the plane in Ukrainian air space, and announced that their trial would start in March 2020.
There are no plans to seek the extradition of the four.
One of the named murder suspects denied Ukrainian separatists shot down the plane.
Girkin told The Associated Press by phone on Wednesday that “the insurgents did not shoot it down”.
Girkin, a Russian national, was a military chief of the Russia-backed rebels in the area at the time and was named by the investigators as one of the key suspects.
The international team investigating the downing of the flight will not ask Russia and Ukraine to extradite the four suspects.
Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said that the team realises that the constitutions of both countries prohibit that.
“In the short term we will ask Russia to hand the summons to the suspects who are in the Russian Federation,” he said.
