Families of MH17 victims to fight on
Family members of the 38 Australians killed when Flight MH17 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine are pressing for further investigations and diplomatic pressure.
Family members of the 38 Australians killed when Flight MH17 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine are pressing for further investigations and diplomatic pressure to flesh out Russian links to the 2014 atrocity.
Ahead of next week’s verdict being handed down against Russian separatists, Moscow continues to deny any responsibility for the deaths of 298 passengers and crew when the passenger plane was shot down by a BUK missile.
Prosecutors have told the international court in Schiphol, The Netherlands, that three of the men were senior leaders in the Donetsk People’s Republic, who often discussed tactics about bringing down aircraft, and the fourth, a pro-Russian Ukrainian, organised the security of the missile system.
Many of the devastated family members of the Australian-based victims will fly to Schiphol next week to visit the MH17 memorial of trees, visit the confronting reconstruction of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 and then witness the verdicts, to be handed down late on Thursday.
“I’m expecting there’s going to be a guilty verdict. I can’t imagine how it could not be with a weight of evidence that’s being looked at and the different sources of evidence,’’ said Meryn O’Brien, the mother of Jack O’Brien, 25, who had rushed to make the plane after arriving late to Schiphol airport on that fateful day.
Paul Guard, the son of Toowoomba pathologist Roger Guard and retired doctor Jill Guard, who were killed returning home after a six-week European holiday, said he thought murder may be difficult to prove because “my personal assumption is that they weren’t intending to bring down a passenger aircraft”.
He said the court hearing had shown Russia was “quite heavily involved” in supporting the separatists. “Obviously, with the events of this year, it’s only become more explicit the involvement of Russia and their trampling over Ukraine sovereign nation,’’ he said.
The separatists on trial are headed by a former Russian colonel Igor Gherkin, who is currently on the frontline fighting with Russian forces in the war against Ukraine. The others are his deputy, ex-Russian intelligence officer Sergey Dubinksy, and assistant Oleg Pulatov, the head of the 2nd division intelligence special forces, and Leonid Kharchenko, who held a Ukrainian passport, in charge of the Buk transportation.
Only Pulatov has defended himself, telling the court from his Russian home by video that the accusations were “ridiculous”, while the other three are being tried in absentia.
Families have told The Australian that this year’s dramatic escalation by Russia to extend the eight-year conflict in the Donbas to all of Ukraine has highlighted to the world President Vladimir Putin’s barbaric and horrific regime despite Russia’s vehement denials, spreading of conspiracy theories to distance themselves from the crime, and failure to take any responsibility.
Meryn O’Brien said friends had recently told her that Russia’s actions in Ukraine this year had vindicated the family’s early beliefs about Russia’s involvement in the downing of the aircraft. “It’s so much more out in the open for everybody,’’ she said referring to Russia’s aggression.
The timing of the court decision several hours after this week’s Bali meeting of G20 leaders is an opportunity for the West to show the Russians “contempt in a diplomatic way”, said Jack’s father, Jon O’Brien.
“I know we can’t use what has happened in Ukraine over the last nine months as evidence for Russian culpability in a legal sense, but to us they are intrinsically connected,” he said.
“This is the same war that took Jack’s life and the lives of all on MH17.
“The lies and disinformation coming from Russia that was so confusing and hard to interpret then, is starkly obvious and transparent now.
“The brutality and violence that was happening in a corner then, is now laid bare in all its ugliness before the world.”
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