Dutch prosecutors on Monday began their closing arguments in the trial of suspects in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine and said the victims 'didn't stand a chance' once a rocket hit the plane
AMSTERDAM, Dec 20 - Dutch prosecutors on Monday began their closing arguments in the trial of suspects in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine and said the victims "didn't stand a chance" once a rocket hit the plane
"At that moment a warhead from a Buk missile detonated to the left of the cockpit, shrapnel and missile parts pierced the left of the cockpit and the accompanying blast does the rest," Berger said.None of the defendants were present in court. One suspect, Russian Oleg Pulatov, has sent lawyers to represent him during the trial. The others, Russians Sergey Dubinsky and Igor Girkin and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, have never cooperated with the court and are being tried in absentia.
MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by a missile fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels during fighting with Ukrainian government troops, international investigators say.After years of collecting evidence, a Dutch-led international Joint Investigation Team concluded in 2019 that the missile launcher used to hit the civilian airplane came from a Russian army base just across the border.
On Monday prosecutors went into detail about how they linked certain phone numbers to the suspects and described the situation on the ground in eastern Ukraine in July 2014.
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