International investigators tomorrow are to release their final report into the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over war-torn Ukraine, but the burning question of who was to blame is to remain unresolved.
The Dutch Safety Board, leading a team of international investigators since the Boeing 777 went down last year, is to release the report at the Gilze-Rijen Air Base in southern Netherlands.
All 298 people on board — most of them Dutch — including the 15 crew members died when the routine flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur was brought down, possibly by a missile, during heavy fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists.
Tomorrow’s report — 15 months after last year’s July 17 crash — is to focus on four subjects, the Dutch board said in a statement.
“The cause of the crash; the issue of flying over conflict areas; the question why Dutch ... relatives of victims had to wait two to four days before receiving confirmation from the Dutch authorities that their loved ones were on board; and lastly, the question as to what extent the occupants of flight MH17 were conscious of the crash,” the board said.
However, as the board has pointed out many times, it will not assign blame nor say who pulled the trigger.
“It is the purpose of the criminal investigation to answer those [questions],” it said.
However, Kiev and the West have pointed the finger at the separatists, charging they might have used a BUK surface-to-air missile supplied by Russia to blow the airplane from the sky.
The Russian maker of the BUK missile said it too is to hold a press conference in Moscow tomorrow to explain the “real reasons” for the disaster after holding an “experiment” that entailed detonating a missile next to an airplane.
The downing of MH17 further strained relations between Russia and the West, already at their lowest since the Cold War due to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The UN estimates about 8,000 people have been killed and 18,000 others have been wounded since clashes erupted there in April last year.
The report’s release also comes amid heightened concern over Moscow’s role in Syria, where it has launched air strikes that it says are aimed at routing extremists.
Relatives of the victims, who in July marked the first anniversary of the crash with an emotional gathering attended by more than 2,000 people, said they believed the final report will at least answer some questions.
They will also for the first time be confronted with the harrowing sight of a partial reconstruction of the doomed airplane made from pieces of wreckage brought back from the crash site.
“The report will throw new light onto the case as we know it at the moment,” MH17 Air Disaster Foundation chairman Dennis Schouten said.
Relatives understand that the criminal probe has not yet been completed to answer who was behind the probable firing of the missile, he told reporters.
“That must come from the criminal probe and has to be proved properly,” Schouten said.
However, with the release of tomorrow’s report “the net is certainly drawing a little closer,” he added.
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