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Court’s verdict in MH17 case politicized, groundless — Russian legislator

Leonid Slutsky stressed that "double standards and a one-sided approach were seen especially clearly against the backdrop of the incident involving the fall of missiles on the territory of Poland"

MOSCOW, November 17. /TASS/. The Dutch court produced a politicized ruling in the case of the MH17 flight disaster over Ukraine in July 2014, because no hard evidence was presented to the judges, the chairman of the State Duma’s committee on international affairs, Leonid Slutsky, said on Thursday.

"The decision is politicized, of course, and it is impossible to agree with it. Russian specialists have never been allowed to participate in the JIT (Joint Investigation Group - TASS) activities, and Almaz-Antey's calculations were simply ignored. No significant evidence was presented," he said.

Slutsky stressed that "double standards and a one-sided approach were seen especially clearly against the backdrop of the incident involving the fall of missiles on the territory of Poland." Slutsky noted that in this case Ukrainian specialists would be allowed to the scene of the incident, while the blame for the missiles of the Ukrainian air defense system S-300 that fell on Polish territory would be placed on Russia.

A Dutch court sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment three of the four defendants in the case of the MH17 flight disaster that occurred over Ukraine in July 2014. The verdict was pronounced on Thursday by Judge Hendrik Steenhuis. Earlier, the court found the former head of the Donetsk People's Republic’s militia Igor Girkin (Strelkov) and his subordinates Sergey Dubinsky and Leonid Kharchenko guilty of involvement in the incident. The fourth defendant, Oleg Pulatov, represented by two Dutch lawyers, was acquitted.

Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing-777 (passenger flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur) was shot down on July 17, 2014 over the Donetsk Region of Ukraine, killing 298 people - citizens of ten countries. The Joint Investigation Team announced in June 2019 that it had established a list of four suspected accomplices. Their trial began on March 9, 2020. All of them were accused of delivering a Buk anti-aircraft system to Ukraine from Russia. The prosecutors demanded life imprisonment for all. The defendants were tried in absentia.

Russian officials have repeatedly expressed distrust towards the investigation team, pointing to the groundlessness of the prosecution's arguments and reluctance to take into account Moscow's arguments in the course of the investigation.

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