Dutch Prosecutors Demand Life Sentences In MH17 Downing

Dutch prosecutors on Wednesday demanded life sentences for four suspects in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Prosecutors said the four recklessly used a Russian missile to bring down the passenger jet, killing all 298 passengers and crew, adding that they caused “deep and irreversible suffering” to relatives of the 298 people killed.

Public prosecutor Manon Ridderbeks made the sentence demand on the third day of a presentation of evidence supporting the indictment. The suspects are being tried in absentia.

Life sentences are rare in the Netherlands, where the sentence means the convicted person spending the rest of their life in prison.

But Ridderbeks said it was a necessary in the MH17 downing because of the extreme nature of the crime and to act as a deterrent.

Prosecutors accuse Russians Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Igor Pulatov as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, who were separatist rebels fighting Ukrainian government forces in 2014, of forming a team that aimed to bring down Ukrainian planes using a missile system trucked in from a Russian military base.

Prosecutor Thijs Berger told judges earlier Wednesday that it’s legally irrelevant that the suspects wanted to shoot down military and not civilian aircraft.

The trial is being held in the Netherlands at a high security courtroom near Schiphol Airport because nearly 200 of those on board were Dutch citizens. Victims came from a total of 16 different nations.