Remains Of 2 Victims In MH17 Plane Crash Never Found - Judge

SCHIPHOL (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th June, 2021) The remains of two passengers of the Malaysian jet which crashed in eastern Ukraine in 2014 have never been recovered, Hendrik Steenhuis, the judge presiding over the MH17 trial, said on Tuesday.

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. The court began hearings on the merits of the case on Monday.

According to the judge, 296 passengers, whose bodies and remains were found at the crash site, were identified. The remains of the two others who were aboard the plane were never recovered, he said during the hearing.

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 territory controlled by Kiev. The Dutch court confirmed the receipt of these documents at the first hearing.