A Dutch court on Thursday convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian national who commanded pro-Russian separatists in Donbas of murder in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine in 2014, in which all 298 passengers and crew on board were killed, APA reports citing The Washington Post.
The conviction of the defendants, including two former Russian security service officers, implicates the Russian government, which long denied responsibility for the destruction of the jetliner and had refused to extradite the defendants or cooperate with investigators. A third Russian defendant was acquitted.
None of the defendants attended the trial. Those convicted were Igor Girkin, a former colonel of the FSB, Russia’s security service who later served as defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic; Sergey Dubinsky, a former officer of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence, and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian commander of separatist forces in Donbas.
They were sentenced to life in prison, though they may never be captured.
The fourth defendant, Oleg Pulatov, who served in a special unit of the GRU, was acquitted for lack of evidence. Pulatov was the only defendant who sent lawyers to defend him in the trial and he had previously asked the court to acquit him, saying he played no part in the incident.
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