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BOEING 777 CRASH IN DONBASS

Netherlands leaves Donetsk republic's proposal to take away Boeing fragments uncommented

The Dutch Safety Board has no right to reveal information on the fragments or any contacts made while the investigation was still underway

© TASS/Mikhail Sokolov

THE HAGUE, September 21 /TASS/. The Netherlands has refused to comment a proposal of the acting chief prosecutor of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) that the Dutch side take away the Boeing fragments, which have recently been collected in Ukraine.

Sara Ferna, a spokesperson for the Dutch Safety Board, told TASS on Monday that the board had no right to reveal information on the fragments or any contacts made while the investigation was still underway.

She confirmed that a report on the MH17 crash would be published on October 13 as planned having excluded any possibility to postpone the date in connection with the newly emerged piece of material evidence.

The Dutch Prosecutor’s Office, which is coordinating the operations of the Joint Investigative Group, has had no reaction to the newly appeared facts so far.

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Last week, Andrey Spivak, the acting chief prosecutor of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), has sent a letter to Dutch Chief Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke requesting him to send representatives of the Joint Investigative Group to the crash site and officially accept the 2,500 recently found Malaysian Boeing fragments.

Spivak noted that unidentified persons who introduced themselves to be OSCE employees were trying to confiscate the fragments, even from the local residents, without authorization, with an aim to secretly take them out of Ukraine.

"It is absolutely clear that the attempts of the unknown persons could be aimed at replacing or scrapping the fragments, a vital material evidence in the MH17 case, which can be used to falsify the whole investigation," Spivak said.

The Boeing 777-200ER passenger plane which was on an MH17 flight from Amsterdam /the Netherlands/ to Kuala Lumpur /Malaysia/ crashed in the east of Ukraine’s Donetsk region on July 17, 2014. The Boeing’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members - the citizens of 10 countries - died in the crash.

According to the main version, a surface-to-air or an air-to-air missile downed the plane.

The Ukrainian authorities and the militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic accused each other of the crash.

On July 21, the UN Security Council demanded an all-round and independent investigation into the MH17 crash. Representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry have repeatedly said they are dissatisfied with how the investigation has been going on.

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