NOVOSIBIRSK, November 18. /TASS/. The relatives of passengers and crew of Russia’s Tupolev-154 passenger liner, shot down over the Black Sea presumably by a Ukrainian missile have addressed the Russian leadership and Prosecutor-General’s Office with a request for resuming the investigation of the disaster, the vice-president of the fund for assistance to the families of killed passengers of flight 1812, Pavel Kapchits, told the media.
"The purpose of our appeal is not to win compensations for the relatives or press for other civilian claims. We believe that our dear ones died a violent death in the sky over the Black Sea and somebody must be brought to justice to face the charges, including criminal ones. We believe it is essential to ensure the criminal case should be reopened and our Prosecutor-General’s Office must look into the matter again," he said.
Kapchits explained that the investigation should produce a definite conclusion whether the air disaster was due to criminal negligence by Ukrainian military, or if it was a terrorist attack. "We are still uncertain about that," he added.
He warned that if the probe failed to be resumed, the fund would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
A Tupolev-154M passenger jet of Russia’s Sibir airlines en route from Tel-Aviv to Novosibirsk with 51 Israeli citizens, 15 Russians and twelve crew on board (flight 1812) was lost over the Black Sea on October 4, 2001. It is believed that it was unintentionally downed by a Ukrainian air defense missile S-200, fired during a military exercise in Crimea. There were no survivors. In January 2011 Kiev’s court of appeal ruled that the investigators of the Interstate Aviation Committee failed to prove the Ukrainian missile was to blame.