Final probe report on MH17 to be released tomorrow

Why was the plane flying over a conflict region where there were known to be heavy military weapons? And finally: Were passengers and crew aware of what was happening in the final minutes and seconds of the crash?

They will also, for the first time, be confronted with the harrowing sight of a partial reconstruction of the doomed plane made from pieces of wreckage brought back from the crash site. “Who’s responsible for those 298 deaths?”

According to its website http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/, for the publication of the MH17 reports, the board has opted not to do so for each report individually, but instead to provide a single document covering all of the various investigations.

It is widely expected that the investigation will say the plane was brought down by a Russian-made Buk missile, although under rules governing worldwide flight crash investigations the board does not have the authority to apportion blame.

A separate worldwide criminal investigation is underway that aims to answer that question. Most were Dutch nationals. In August, prosecutors announced they are investigating several fragments “possibly originating from a Buk” missile system. “But so many questions are, for now, unanswered”.

A letter from the Deputy Chief of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency to the global Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) claims that the DSB ignored “comprehensive information” relating to the downing of the Boeing 777 over war-torn Eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, provided by the Russian side and violated the principle of “sequence of conclusions.” Russian Federation vetoed the move earlier this year at the United Nations Security Council.

Silene Fredriksz-Hoogzand, whose son Bryce and his girlfriend Daisy Oehlers were killed, fears the Safety Board conclusions will fall short of providing the definitive answers she wants to hear.

“The families who I’ve been speaking to say they don’t want to know if their relatives were conscious or aware in those final moments”, says Holligan.