Dutch Court Receives 9 More Reparation Claims From Relatives Of MH17 Plane Crash Victims

The Hague District Court has received nine more reparation claims from families of the victims of the 2014 Malaysian jet crash in eastern Ukraine, Hendrik Steenhuis, the judge presiding over the MH17 trial, said on Monday

SCHIPHOL (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th June, 2021) The Hague District Court has received nine more reparation claims from families of the victims of the 2014 Malaysian jet crash in eastern Ukraine, Hendrik Steenhuis, the judge presiding over the MH17 trial, said on Monday.

On Monday, the court began hearings on the merits of the case. The total number of reparation claims now stands at 299.

The trial of four suspects in the case, Russian citizens Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky, and Oleg Pulatov, as well as Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko, began in early March 2020 in the Netherlands. Of the four defendants, only Pulatov is represented by lawyers in the court.

The MH17 flight was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when the plane vanished from radars over the war-torn Donetsk region.

All 298 on board died, most of them Dutch and Australian nationals.

A Dutch-led team of international investigators (JIT) claimed that the plane was hit by a Buk missile belonging to the Russian armed forces. Moscow, which is not part of the JIT, has consistently denied the allegations and offered its cooperation in the investigation but was denied access to the probe.

Russia has provided the Dutch investigators not only with Russian radar data, but also the documents proving that the Buk missile, which hit the Boeing, actually belonged to the Ukrainian forces and was launched from a territory controlled by Kiev. The Dutch court confirmed the receipt of these documents at the first hearing.