Downing of flight MH17: Dutch court convicts suspects of murder

AFP.com, 17 Nov, 2022- Dutch judges on Thursday convicted three men of murder for their role in the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine, and sentenced them to life in prison. A fourth man was acquitted.

The convicted men, two Russian former intelligence officers and a Ukrainian separatist leader, were found guilty of downing the plane and killing all 298 people on board.
Former Russian intelligence officers Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Ukrainian separatist leader Leonid Kharchenko were found “guilty of murder”. Oleg Pulatov, another former Russian intelligence officer, was found not guilty.

"Only the most severe punishment is fitting to retaliate for what the suspects have done, which has caused so much suffering to so many victims and so many surviving relatives," Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said, reading a summary of the ruling.