On Thursday 17 November, both the European Union and the Council of Europe welcomed the verdict of the District Court in The Hague on the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, which resulted in the deaths of 298 passengers and crew, many of them Dutch.
Two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia, and one Russian was acquitted.
The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, called the verdict “an important first step towards truth and accountability”.
He also recalled that the criminal investigation into other people’s involvement was still ongoing, as were proceedings against the Russian State before the European Court of Human Rights and the International Civil Aviation Organization. Russia must take responsibility for this tragedy and cooperate fully with the ongoing investigations, Mr Borrell reiterated.
The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Tiny Kox from the Netherlands, was pleased that justice had finally been done. “The verdict shows that the international community will not accept impunity”, he said. He denounced “the intolerable attitude of the Russian authorities, who have sought to obscure the truth and propagate alternative narratives based on false evidence. Such shameful manoeuvres can be witnessed daily in the war of aggression against Ukraine”.
In a resolution adopted unanimously last June, the Assembly had already denounced the “disinformation” practised by Russia in the investigation of this crash and invited the European Court of Human Rights to give priority to this case, which was referred to it by the Netherlands under several articles of the Convention: Article 2 (right to life), Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman treatment) and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy).
At a public hearing in January 2022 on the admissibility of the case, Russia unsurprisingly pleaded inadmissibility. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc and Camille-Cerise Gessant)