MH17 downing: International team suspends investigation

Dutch prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer stated Thursday that “the investigation has now reached its limit”.

“All leads have been exhausted,” she stated, because the group started laying out the proof it uncovered in its long-running investigation.

Dutch prosecutors stated of their abstract of findings that “there are strong indications that the Russian president decided on supplying” a Buk missile system to Ukrainian separatists.

A Buk system was used to deliver down MH17 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

None of the suspects appeared for the trial and it was unclear if the three who have been discovered responsible of a number of murders will ever serve their sentences.

The convictions and the court docket’s discovering that the surface-to-air Buk missile that blew the Amsterdam-to-Kuala Lumpur flight out of the sky got here from a Russian navy base have been seen as a transparent indication that Moscow had a task within the tragedy.

Russia has all the time denied involvement. The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the court docket in November of bowing to stress from Dutch politicians, prosecutors and the news media.

But the November convictions held that Moscow was in general management in 2014 over the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, the separatist space of jap Ukraine the place the missile was launched. The Buk missile system got here from the Russian navy’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, based mostly within the metropolis of Kursk.

The group has continued to analyze the crew of the Russian Buk missile system that introduced down the airplane and those that ordered its deployment in Ukraine.

“The indications for close ties between the leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian government officials raises questions about their involvement in the deployment” of the missile, the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service stated on its web site, citing intercepted telephone calls between leaders of the breakaway area and “high-ranking Russian government officials held in the summer of 2014”.