MH17 crash: Key findings from Dutch investigators

Ukraine and Western countries contend the airliner was downed by a missile fired by Russia-backed rebels or Russian forces, from rebel-controlled territory.

The Dutch Safety Board also mentioned that they have been unable to determine who was in control of the particular area where the BUK missile was sacked from.

“Petro Poroshenko stressed that the completion and publication of the technical investigation is an important step in our search for, and prosecution of, of all those responsible for this awful crime”, the Ukrainian president’s website said in a statement.

That information was presented to the Dutch investigators, but was not taken into account, Novikov claimed.

He says that the Dutch Safety Board report “is a new element and undoubtedly an important building block” in the worldwide criminal investigation that is being led by Dutch prosecutors and detectives.

The findings of the Dutch Safety Board were announced at a press conference against the dramatic backdrop of the Boeing 777’s partially reconstructed fuselage. The cockpit was struck first, causing that section to break away from the main body of the aircraft and killing crew members inside.

But it added, “it can not be ruled out that a few occupants remained conscious” during the 60 to 90 seconds before the plane crashed.

Safety board members Erwin Muller and Marjolein van Asselt were next to inform 75 embassies about the investigation in The Hague. This resulted in no oxygen and all passengers died nearly instantly. All the camouflaged rebels who were patrolling the area and manning the checkpoints are gone.

Joustra said Russia’s government had challenged the findings, saying fighters in that part of Ukraine did not have access to Buk systems at the time of the crash.

In its preliminary report released in September 2014, the DSB said that MH17 broke up in the air, probably after being hit by “a large number of high-energy objects”.

Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey, the manufacturer of Buk missile systems, also presented the results of its simulation of the flight MH17 crash on Tuesday.

The investigation, however, did not conclude where the missile was sacked from.

‘We are talking about a 9N314M missile which was sacked by a Buk launcher, ‘ OVV chairman Tjibbe Joustra said.

The crash site of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 near the village of Grabove, Ukraine. But the report will not say who was to blame. Part of that reason was that 16 military airplanes and helicopters had been shot down in the weeks before the MH17 crash.