Prosecutors investigating the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 said on Thursday (May 24) they had identified the missile used to shoot down the plane as coming from Russia's armed forces.

Wilbert Paulissen, head of the crime squad of the Netherlands' national police, said the missile was fired from Russia's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Brigade.

"All the vehicles in a convoy carrying the missile were part of the Russian armed forces", he told a televised news conference.

Russia has denied involvement in the incident.

The Malaysian Airlines flight was blown out of the sky over conflict-wracked east Ukraine on July 17, 2014 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

All 298 passengers and crew, most of them Dutch, were killed in the disaster. But there were 17 nationalities on board including Australians, Britons, Malaysians and Indonesians.

The investigators had previously concluded that the plane was brought down by a Russian-made BUK missile system brought in from Russia and fired from territory in Ukraine held by Moscow-backed rebels. But they have stopped short of directly saying who pulled the trigger.

Now the team has painstaking recreated the route taken by the missile convoy from Kursk across the border into Ukraine using videos and photos.

Paulissen added the team had "ascertained that the BUK-TELAR has a number of unique characteristics. These characteristics as such served as a type of fingerprint for the missile."

Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement in the downing of the Boeing flight 777, putting the blame instead on Kiev.

...[ Continue to next page ]

Share This Post