SYDNEY, KOMPAS.com – Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Friday (11/18/2022), urged Russia to hand over three men found guilty of shooting down the flight Malaysia Airlines MH17.
He called on President Vladimir Putin not to “hide the killers”.
A Dutch court on Thursday (17/11/2022) sentenced three men to life in prison in connection with the 2014 crash of a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine.
Read also: July 17, 2014 Tragedy: Malaysia Airlines MH17 shot down at the Ukraine-Russia border
The three men are Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky from Russia and Leonid Kharchenko from Ukraine.
They were found guilty in absence of shot down the Boeing 777 with a Russian-supplied missile, killing all 298 on board.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the ruling held the Russian Federation accountable.
“We are calling on Russia to hand over the convicts so they can stand trial for their heinous crimes,” Wong told reporters.
“No amount of evasion, blackout or disinformation on the part of the Russian Federation can evade this fact,” he said, as quoted by the news agency AFP extension.
Wong said Russia’s refusal to hand over the men ultimately served as a testament to Putin’s character.
“We will tell Russia that the world knows you are hiding a killer and that you are saying something about yourself, Mr. Putin,” he later told the national broadcaster. ABC.
Russia dismissed the verdict as politically motivated, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed it as “something significant”.
The trial marked the end of a long search for justice for disaster victims from 10 countries, including 196 Dutch, 43 Malaysian and 38 Australian nationals.
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