The downing of MH17, a false flag?

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which led the criminal investigation, declared, in its last press conference, that it had failed to identify the individuals that had operated and commanded the alleged murder weapon, a Russian ground-to-air system called Buk. The JIT also stated that it had failed to determine why the fatal missile was fired.

The District Court of The Hague convicted two Russians and one Ukrainian. Not for having shot down the plane. They were allegedly involved in the transport of the murder weapon. The only suspect who had arranged for his defence, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted.

Like the District Court of The Hague, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) based their judgement on the findings of the JIT. They ruled that Russia was responsible for the downing of MH17.

The JIT had focused from the very first day of its investigation on the “Russia did it” scenario, the prosecution told the District Court of The Hague in 2020, at the start of the criminal trial.

Ukrainian police officers and public prosecutors were part of the JIT. A Ukrainian prosecutor who had worked on the case confessed in an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC: “I wanted to prove that the Russian government was responsible for the crash.”

During the 69 sessions of the MH17 trial in The Netherlands not a single witness or expert was heard by the presiding judge of the District Court of The Hague.

The US government claims to have observed the launch of the fatal missile from territory that was controlled by pro Russian rebels, but they never provided evidence for this. The Dutch court has not received any satellite or radar data from the US.

The Russian government provided primary radar data but these showed no missile or any other object near MH17.

Western intelligence services did not detect a single Russian air defence system on Ukrainian territory. They however did spot seven Ukrainian Buk systems in Eastern Ukraine.

Judging from the damage to the plane the missile that downed MH17 must have been launched from an area that wasn’t under rebels’ control, the Russian manufacturer of the Buk system, Almaz-Antey, concluded. A team of American experts that was brought in by the defense for a second opinion confirmed this.

Crown witness M58 claims to have seen something that he could not have possibly seen: the launch of the missile from rebels territory and its subsequent destruction of MH17. The alleged launch location was at 26.5 km (16.4 miles) from the place where MH17 was hit, while it was flying at 10 km (6.2 miles) altitude over a densely clouded area. Also, M58 repeatedly declared that he witnessed the incident on July 16, the day before the crash (!)

A Dutch team recovered seven parts of a Buk missile that had been found lying loose in the crash area, among which a venturi and a motor casing. At a JIT press conference it was suggested that these parts proved MH17 was downed by a Buk missile. Eventually, these parts were not presented as evidence. In court the prosecution declared that it was not clear at what moment in time the missile parts had landed in the area.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, the serial numbers engraved on the motor casing and venturi indicated that these were part of a missile delivered to Ukraine during the Soviet era. The ministry substantiated its claim by showing a missile logbook from 1986 and other official documents of the time.

The prosecution claimed that the plane was hit by a Buk missile equipped with a 9N314M warhead, which contains 1870 butterfly shaped particles. The MH17 wreckage lacks butterfly-shaped impact holes, except maybe for one hole which, according to a Belgian military expert, might qualify as such. Experiments with a 9N314M warhead conducted by Almaz-Antey and the JIT showed numerous butterfly-shaped impact holes.

Only about 30 percent of the wreckage was recovered and brought to The Netherlands. Part of it was used to reconstruct the Boeing. The rest was stored in eighteen containers, which the defence lawyers of Pulatov were not allowed to access.

There are many issues with the pictures and videos that were presented as evidence that there was a Russian Buk in rebels territory. The metadata of a video of a Buk in Donetsk indicate that is was shot in 2012. A video of a Buk in Luhansk was missing from the SD card on which “a secret surveillance unit” allegedly recorded the event on July 18. A Dutch police officer who studied the card determined that the video file had been erased.

The Dutch forensic institute NFI reported that it could not be determined whether all photos and videos show the same Buk, and whether a Russian Buk was visible on any photo or video. The Dutch police then redid the NFI investigation. The police officer in charge of the investigation had been informed beforehand that MH17 was downed by a Buk that had been brought in from Russia. He then concluded that all imagery showed the same Russian Buk.

The Ukrainian secret service SBU presented wiretapped conversations in which the rebels talk about the downing of a plane. In court it appeared that the JIT had never forensically checked the audio for editing, anti-dating and voice cloning.

The SBU implicated rebels commander Igor Bezler in the downing of MH17 by presenting wiretapped conversations in which he can be heard talking about the downing of a plane. The Dutch prosecution stated that these conversations could not possibly be related to MH17.

There is not a single phone intercept in which an admission or presumption of guilt comes through. Nowhere is there any mention of involvement of the rebels’ militia or a Russian Buk crew in the downing of MH17. There are mostly many conversations from shortly after the crash of rebels asking each other what had happened because they really had no idea.

Ukrainian and western media propagated the narrative that the Russian crew of a Buk Telar mistook MH17 for a Ukrainian military transport plane. For this, they referred to a pro Russian social media account, that had mistakenly reported that a transport plane was shot down. They left unreported that the first person who spread this false narrative was a pro-Kiev Twitter-account.

MH17 flew in a straight line, at constant altitude and speed toward the Russian border, in a known corridor for civil aviation. Thus, the Boeing’s altitude and speed alone should have been important indicators to any crew of a Buk Telar that there was no danger from the approaching object. The Dutch prosecutors did not present any scenario in which the crew of a Buk MH17 could have mistaken it for a fighter jet or military transport aircraft.

The identity of the anonymous person behind the blog ukraine@war, who led the first journalists to the location that later was designated by the JIT as the crime scene (the launch location of the fatal missile), is revealed in The MH17 Trial. He appears to be a Dutchman.

A photo of a smoke trail. that was presented in court as evidence for the launch of the missile that downed MH17, may have been from a Strela-10. The short range missiles of this air defence system cannot reach a plane flying at 10 km altitude. Both the rebels and the mercenaries of the Wagner Group used the Strela-10 system to down Ukrainian military aircraft.

Before MH17 was hit, already sixteen Ukrainian military aircraft had been downed by the rebels. Still Ukraine did not fully close its airspace over Eastern Ukraine.

The next of kin of German victims lodged complaints at the European Court of Human Rights, accusing Kiev of negligent homicide. Relatives of the Dutch victims were advised to spare Ukraine. They were encouraged and financially stimulated to begin legal proceedings against Russia.

The Dutch authorities knew about the air war in Donbass, but continued to allow aircraft carrying Dutch passengers to fly over Eastern Ukraine. According to former chairman of the European pilots association ECA, Nico Voorbach, airlines from countries of the five eyes – the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – had been warned not to fly over Eastern Ukraine.

MH17 was guided through Ukrainian airspace by the Dnipropetrovsk control tower. A former officer of the Ukrainian secret service SBU, Vasily Prozorov, who defected to Russia, revealed a document from his former employer showing that on July 17, 2014, three military officers from the US embassy in Kiev visited Dnipropetrovsk airport. The SBU document was not discussed by the Dutch court. It is unknown if the JIT verified its authenticity and if its investigators interviewed the three men.