JAKARTA - The families of the victims of the MH17 plane who were shot down in 2014 are not fully happy. The Dutch court has indeed sentenced 3 people to guilt. But they are still at large.
The three people: two Russian citizens Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy as well as Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko were found guilty of the deaths of 298 people on board the MH17 who were shot down by Russian ground-to-air missiles while crossing eastern Ukraine's sky in 2014.
They were sentenced to life in prison. They were even ordered to pay more than 16 million in compensation to the victims.
Even though the punishment is maximum, it still seems like they are not playing. The three men are still at large and it is still unclear whether they will serve their sentences or not.
Meanwhile, the third Russian citizen, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted of the charges, for lack of evidence of his role in the missile shooting, as quoted by The Guardian, Thursday, November 17.
The four names mentioned earlier were pro-Russian separatist movement fighters, the Donetsk People's Republic. None of the men appeared in court and only Pulatov chose to appoint a lawyer, who pleaded not guilty in his name.
Presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis said the court had concluded MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made BUK missile from a farm in eastern Ukraine.
The court also found that Russia had complete control over separatist forces in eastern Ukraine when the plane was shot down, he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was an important court decision.
The verdict ended 32 months of trial starting in March 2020 in a safe courtroom at Schiphol airport, where MH17 flights took off on July 17, 2014 to Kuala Lumpur.
Just hours after the flight, a missile exploded just above and to the left of the cockpit, causing the plane to burst into the air, according to an international investigation. Everyone on the ship was killed.
The victims came from 17 countries, including 198 Dutch nationals, 43 Malaysians, 38 Australians, and 10 British citizens.
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