Australia yesterday said it was “sickened” after new footage emerged allegedly of Russian-backed rebels ransacking the luggage of passengers killed after Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, as a ceremony marked the disaster’s one-year anniversary.
The video was obtained by Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and published exactly a year after the Malaysia Airlines plane was blown out of the sky during a routine flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur.
All 298 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 777 were killed, the majority of them Dutch, but with 38 Australian citizens and residents among them.
Photo: AFP
“It is sickening to watch and 12 months on from the downing of MH17 it is deeply concerning that this footage has emerged now,” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told the Nine Network, without being able to verify the authenticity of the video. “It is certainly consistent with the intelligence advice that we received 12 months ago, that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile.”
The newspaper claimed the footage, which it said was smuggled out of the fighters’ Donetsk base and only obtained this week, was filmed by the rebels themselves as they captured what they initially believed to be a Ukrainian air force fighter jet they had shot down.
It said the film records their dismay as they discover the aircraft was a commercial plane, but it also shows men, holding guns and dressed in army camouflage, wandering among the downed plane’s wreckage, rifling through bags and scattering their contents on the ground.
The newspaper said that in one frame a man wore a clearly visible identification tag from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic around his neck.
The release of the footage coincided with a service in Canberra to mark the tragedy’s one-year anniversary, attended by 120 relatives of those who died.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott unveiled a plaque, mounted on soil brought back from the spot where plane crashed, commemorating the Australian victims.
“Today we remember our dead, we thank those who brought them home, but most of all, we acknowledge the suffering of the bereaved,” Abbott said. “You have had the worst year of your life. Today our nation pauses to acknowledge your tragedy.”
Abbott earlier told national radio the video highlighted that “this was an atrocity, it was in no way an accident.”
“They may not have known that they were shooting down a passenger plane, but they were deliberately shooting out of the sky what they knew was a large aircraft,” he said. “There was a reckless indifference, if you like, to where that missile was going.”
The plane was shot down during a bout of heavy fighting last year between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists, sparking global condemnation.
Ukraine and the West point the finger at the separatists, saying they could have used a BUK surface-to-air missile supplied by Russia, but Moscow denies involvement and instead accuses the Ukrainian military.
A criminal probe by a joint investigation team consisting of Australian, Belgian, Dutch, Malaysian and Ukrainian detectives is currently underway.
The five nations have also asked the UN Security Council to establish an international criminal tribunal to try those responsible for crimes connected to the plane’s downing.
Britain, one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, backed the move yesterday.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to