Justice
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Seven years after the in-flight explosion of the Malaysia Airlines plane, Dutch prosecutors on Wednesday requested life imprisonment against three Russians and a Ukrainian, despite the obstruction of Russia.
Dutch prosecutors on Wednesday called for life in prison against the four men prosecuted for the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, accusing them of murdering 298 people on board. The sordid images of the catastrophe had traveled the world. On the morning of July 17, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 took off from Amsterdam-Schiphol airport, heading for Kuala Lumpur. Two hours later, while flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters in eastern Ukraine, the plane exploded. Its cockpit has just been hit on the left by an anti-aircraft missile. The 298 passengers on the flight were killed. Among them, 193 Dutch.
From the plane, there are only 8,000 pieces of debris and almost as many tracks left for an unprecedented investigation which has been the subject of cooperation between several countries such as Australia, Ukraine and the Netherlands. At the request of Kiev, the Netherlands were assigned to try the case. Dutch law does not distinguish between civil and military aircraft, which paved the way for a murder conviction. The whole issue of the trial, which opened on March 9, 2020, was therefore to examine the chain of command which led to a military missile being able to shoot down a civilian plane.
What is the background to the crash of flight MH17?
In 2014, eastern Ukraine, which the plane flew over, was the scene of violent clashes between Kiev and Moscow. In February, against the backdrop of pro-European demonstrations in Ukraine, Russia officially invades the country …