SCHIPHOL, Netherlands (CN) — Defense lawyers for a man accused of helping shoot down passenger flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 said Monday prosecutors were driven by vengeance, not the truth.
In a high-security courtroom near the Dutch airport where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 departed over seven years ago, the District Court of The Hague listened as lawyers for Russian man Oleg Pulatov outlined their closing arguments in a trial that began in March 2020.
Along with Pulatov, two other Russian men, Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky, and one Ukraine man, Leonid Kharchenko, are also charged with 298 counts of murder for allegedly supplying the Buk surface-to-air missile that prosecutors say shot down the Boeing 777. None of the men are in Dutch custody and only Pulatov has retained counsel. The other three are being tried in absentia.
Although the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine doesn't directly impact the trial, it was mentioned repeatedly.
“Our hearts go out to those who are affected. Let there be no misunderstanding that we condemn and distance ourselves from the violent violation,” defense lawyer Sabine ten Doesschate told the court. She said that she and her co-counsel thought long and hard about continuing to represent Pulatov after Russia launched its invasion last week. Their 55-year-old client is a former Russian military intelligence officer who was known as the right-hand man of Girkin, the defense minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine, a pro-Russian breakaway region.
The defense team disputes the findings of the Joint Investigative Taskforce, a multi-national investigation team that concluded MH17 was shot down by a Buk missile, originally belonging to the Russian military, and from a region of Ukraine that was controlled by separatists.
Boudewijn van Eijck, the other member of Pulatov’s defense team, claimed the JIT’s conclusion wasn’t credible. The defense argues it wasn’t a Buk at all, but another surface-to-air missile system.
“If it turns out to be a Buk, it was one that was an older model, only used at that time by Ukraine," van Eijck said. He said the defense had retained a group of American experts who will show the JIT was incorrect.
The duo also questioned the quality of the evidence obtained by the JIT. Because of the yearslong conflict in eastern Ukraine, it was difficult for investigators to retrieve evidence and much of the plane's wreckage was never recovered. Some of it was collected by Ukrainian authorities, evidence the defense calls unreliable. Further, many of the witnesses had their identities protected.
“You can’t understand their motivations if you don’t know who they are,” van Eijck said.
The defense team's closing statements, which can include the presentation of news evidence, will continue over the next month.
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