Fatima still awaiting her homecoming, four years after MH17 downing

Four years after MH17 was shot down, the remains of a much-loved Perth scientist still haven’t been collected. Why?

Jerzy Dyczynski and Angela Rudhart-Dyczynski sit on part of the wreckage of the crashed aircraft in Ukraine in 2014. Picture: AP

One of the most tragic outcomes of the murder of 298 passengers and crew on board MH17 nearly four years ago is to be found in a ­secure area of the Zuiderhof ­Cemetery, north of Amsterdam.

There, in a private spot amid the serene postmodernist space, a secret burial took place in the presence of Australian diplomats and town officials: that of Fatima ­Dyczynski, the 25-year-old scientist who was on the ill-fated flight to meet her parents in Perth.

But The Weekend Australian has learned that Fatima’s parents, unlike all other relatives of the Australians killed in the ­attack, have not claimed her ­remains and they weren’t present at the interment.

Her devastated parents have found it tremendously difficult to accept that Fatima never arrived home to consolidate her budding aerospace career. They initially clung to a hope that their daughter somehow survived the Russian BUK missile that exploded near the cockpit of the Boeing 777 en route from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014.

This was despite going to extraordinary lengths in a three-day ­odyssey to visit the war zone 40km from the Russian border in the days afterwards, and seeing first-hand the shocking destruction. But Angela Rudhart-Dyczynski and Jerzy Dyczynski still ­refused to accept their only child had died in the terrifying break-up of the aircraft. In an email to The Weekend Australian last night, they did not acknowledge the burial of their only child’s remains and wrote of Fatima: “She is and always will be ...” They signed off “mum and dad”.

Fatima’s remains were transported from eastern Ukraine to The Netherlands via an Australian C-130 Hercules plane and ­examined by a team of international forensic experts at the ­Korporaal Van Oudheusden military base in Hilversum.

The scientists identified ­Fatima through DNA provided by her father, a qualified acupuncturist, a medical doctor and a scientist from Perth’s riverside suburb of Nedlands, when he travelled through Schiphol Airport on his way to the crash site. At the time, Angela said she was the mother of “a well known scientist, a beautiful girl and a very, very special person’’.

Many weeks afterwards, a Dutch liaison officer informed the family that Fatima had been positively identified and her remains were available to be repatriated, with help from the Australian government, back to Perth.

Dutch officials were ­patient for many months, but under Dutch law a person’s ­remains are meant to be collected within six days of being released by the coroner for immediate burial or cremation.

Fatima Dyczynski.

Whether the family is still in a state of shock and denial, or have found some solace in other ways, is uncertain. People close to the family acknowledge the couple are still in so much pain they are keeping to themselves. Eventually, in a quiet and dignified ceremony, consular officials from Australia, and The Netherlands, and local city executives held a small private interment of Fatima’s remains at Zuiderhof.

It is understood the remains can be easily repatriated to Australia if and when her family makes that decision.

At the large public memorial to the MH17 disaster not far from Schiphol, where all the passengers and crew have dedicated trees laid out in the shape of a ribbon, Fatima’s tree stands out. The Scotch pine is evergreen while those around Fatima are deciduous. She is number 298, the very last of the victims.

A kind visitor has placed Australian flags and koala mementos around the trees of the Australian victims, adding a poignant national tribute to the yellow wattle-looking beads on the tree of West Australian grandfather Nick Morris, who is commemorated next to the Maslin siblings, Otis, 8, Evie, 10, and Mo, 12.

Victorian Marie Rizk, 54, has a wooden heart on hers, next to the little koala. And the tree of Jack O’Brien, 25, bears his photo and a hand-knitted scarf draped beautifully around the bare branches.

But Fatima’s tree has no such accoutrements. Her plaque identifies her as German, even though she moved to Australia as a 15-year-old, regarded Perth as home and was there to start a new technology job after five years of study in The Netherlands.

At least two memorial pages have been set up online to remember Fatima. A message posted anonymously on one of these pages reads: “Dear Fatima, I hope that by now you have been brought home to Australia and laid to rest. When I left Holland in early 2016, you were still there, unclaimed, it broke my heart ... They say they don’t believe it is you, but they know beyond a shadow of a doubt it is you, please bring her home.”

The Weekend Australian contacted the man who set up one of the online memorials. “I did not know her. With the exception of family members, most of the memorial pages I create I select from news stories, obituaries on the internet, etc,” he replied.

To this day, a public Facebook page under Fatima Dyczynski’s name is constantly updated with photographs as a community page in her honour. Some of the images are posted over and again in a loop. On Wednesday, there was one added of Fatima in front of London’s Tower Bridge, with auburn hair falling below her shoulders.

On the bridge in this image are the five interlaced Olympic rings. The London Games began in July 2012, two years before flight MH17 was shot down. On March 20 a photo was added, but in this one she’s blonde with red lipstick. “Moment of ­excellence in an innovative meeting in Perth WA,” the post reads. Going back further, over the last weeks and months, photographs were added of Dyczynski with friends and family. “My parents in front of a precious Mandala. Sometimes there are images you like best and they seem to be timeless,” reads one post from February.

And from December 10 last year: “This was a very special Birthday Evening for me. All my best friends in the Netherlands came to have dinner with me in Delft NL. My mom had made a painting for me in Perth, WA and I got a Birthday-Letter from my parents.”