The Netherlands has headed the investigation into the disaster because 196 victims on the flight were Dutch, and Ukraine agreed to let the Netherlands take the lead role.
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Following a 15-month investigation into the outrage in July previous year – which concluded the Boeing 777 was all but obliterated by a Russian-made missile – the prime minister on Wednesday asserted that “those who committed this crime must answer for it”.
Today the Dutch Safety Board has confirmed that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was hit by a Buk surface-to-air missile while flying over Ukraine.
Almaz-Antey in June had said that a preliminary investigation suggested that the plane was downed by a model of Buk that is no longer in service with the Russian military but that was part of the Ukrainian military arsenal.
However, what the report didn’t reveal was who is to be held responsible for the downing. Ned Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said the USA remained convinced that Russian-backed rebels were responsible.
It said the experiments also refute claims that the missile was sacked from Snizhne, a village that was under rebel control.
“As part of the (Joint Investigation Team), Malaysia remains single-minded in our pursuit of decisive action that will lead to prosecution of the trigger-happy criminals”, Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said.
To come to these conclusions, Joustra said the board had first to reconstruct the front of the downed airliner from rests recovered from the crash site.
According to the relatives, the reports stated that occupants of the Malaysian Airlines flight lost consciousness seconds after the impact of a missile, with the cockpit crew being killed instantly.
The cockpit was torn from the rest of the plane which then broke up, the central portion crashing upside down before catching fire on the ground.
“Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane, above the left-hand side of the cockpit”.
“They told us there was a zero percent chance that the people inside felt anything or had any notion of what was happening”, Oehlers said.
Russian Federation has already offered several versions of this story, including one (since discredited) in which a Ukrainian jet shot down the plane with an air-to-air missile. The damage pattern would have been different, and radar would have picked up the presence of another aircraft, Joustra said.
The Dutch Safety Board following months of investigation, have finally revealed details of the cause and the harrowing last moments experienced by the passengers and crew aboard flight MH 17, implying that a few passengers may have been conscious when the flight went down.
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Between July 14 and July 17 of previous year, 61 operators from 32 countries flew above the contested territory, Joustra noted. “Because nobody thought that civil aviation was at risk”, he said.
