What the MH17 murder charges meant for accountability
A look back at the announcement of charges over the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and what it set in motion.
What did it mean when prosecutors announced that four people would be charged with murder over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17? The question was in focus on 25 June 2019, days after the announcement on 19 June 2019 that three Russians and a Ukrainian would face charges for the crash that killed 298 people on 17 July 2014.
The flight was a scheduled passenger service from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. It was shot down with a Buk 9M38 surface-to-air missile by Russian-backed forces while flying over eastern Ukraine, during the war in Donbas. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Contact was lost about 50 kilometres from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage landed near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, 40 km from the border.
From investigation to courtroom
The announcement marked a move from establishing what happened to naming individuals who would answer for it. The charge was murder, and a date and venue were set: the trial was to open on 9 March 2020 in Badhoevedorp, in the Netherlands.
The nationalities of the accused, three Russians and a Ukrainian, placed the case across borders, in a conflict fought over territory held by separatist forces in Ukraine. For Kyiv, the case concerned a crime committed on its territory.
The scheduled trial gave the families of the 298 victims a defined legal process nearly five years after the crash.
