Despite repeated requests from the Public Prosecution Service and the court, the United States is definitively not providing more information about satellite images that would show the launch of the Buk missile that brought down flight MH17. That would not be possible to ‘protect the sources of intelligence’, it turned out this morning during the first day of the substantive treatment of the MH17 trial.
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Shortly after the July 17, 2014 disaster, then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reported that satellite images showed the trajectory of a Buk missile towards the device. “We saw the launch, we saw the rocket trajectory and we saw the impact.” The Americans released an image on which that track was plotted, but not the underlying images and data.
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A representative of the Public Prosecution Service (OM) has been given access by the Americans. ,,He has a de in the US intelligence briefing received from multiple US officials and he has also had access to various classified and unclassified documents. Part of the underlying metadata and research data was not made available to him for inspection,” said the Justice Department earlier during the trial.
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Both relatives and the court then asked the Americans to release the underlying information. If necessary, the court also suggested that the examining magistrate, who monitors the progress of the investigation, grant the same access as the OM had previously. But the Americans don’t want that. “We cannot provide further cooperation,” was the reply from the US. That would be to ‘protect the sources of the intelligence’.
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Beech rocket
This became apparent this morning on the first day of the substantive treatment of the MH17 trial. Flight MH17 was shot down over a war zone in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board, including 193 Dutchmen, were killed in the crash.
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According to the Public Prosecution Service, a Buk missile from the 53rd brigade of the Russian army, which was a missile installation, crossed the border to support the pro-Russian rebels in the area. The Public Prosecution Service has designated four suspects, three Russians and a Ukrainian. In that period, the four were part of the chain of command with the rebels and would therefore have played a role in the transport of the missile. They have been charged with the murder of 298 people. It is still unknown who actually pressed the launcher’s button and who gave the order to fire.
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