MH17 passengers ruled victims of ‘gross mass murder’

Passengers on board Malaysia Airlines flight 17 were victims of ‘a gross mass murder’, the NSW Coroner has found.

Serge and Vera Oreshkin, the parents of MH17 victim Victor, 29, leave the Glebe Coroner’s Court in Sydney.

Passengers on board the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight 17 were victims of “a gross mass murder”, dying shortly after a Russian-made surface-to-air missile ­exploded above the plane as it flew over eastern Ukraine, the NSW Coroner has found.

Six passengers from NSW — Carol and Michael Clancy, ­Gabriele Lauschet, Jack O’Brien, Victor Oreshkin and Sister Philomene Tiernan — were among the 38 Australians and permanent residents killed when the plane was shot down on July 17, 2014.

In handing down his findings at the Glebe Coroner’s Court in Sydney yesterday, Coroner ­Michael Barnes concluded that passengers on board MH17 were killed by injuries sustained “as a result of a high-altitude aircraft disintegration caused by the detonation of a warhead”.

“The fatal injuries were ­inflicted as a result of a person or persons who has or have not yet been identified, deliberately firing a missile equipped with an ­exploding warhead at the jetliner in which the deceased persons were passengers, causing it to disintegrate,” he said.

Criminal investigations are continuing but the Dutch Safety Board has determined the plane was targeted by Ukrainian separatists near the Russian border.

Mr Barnes said that while it was not his responsibility to make findings of criminal guilt, it would be “pointless sophistry not to ­acknowledge that these deaths were part of a gross mass murder”.

He said it was “reasonable to expect” that a prosecution would be launched at some stage.

“While some of the (victims’ families) have no interest in holding individuals to account for the atrocity, seeing them as small players in a bigger macabre game, others, understandably, want justice for the dead and condign punishment of those responsible,” he said.

Mr Barnes acknowledged the anguish of the victims’ families and friends.

“Sometimes only one person is missing but the whole world feels empty,” said Jon O’Brien, whose son Jack, 25, was one of the 298 passengers on the Malaysian Airlines plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Vera Oreshkin held a photograph of her son Victor, who was 29, as she addressed the inquest.

“Words cannot do justice to Victor, he deserves justice, so do the other passengers,” she said. “He deserves accountability from the cowards who did this.”

The families and friends of the NSW victims attending yesterday’s inquest were shown a graphic video reconstruction of how the aircraft was blown up by the Russian-made Buk missile.

The video showed the missile detonating metres from the nose of the plane, tearing the cockpit from the rest of the plane. A Dutch Safety Board review indicated some passengers died almost immediately. Others would have fallen unconscious and died shortly after the explosion.