MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The defence of Oleg Pulatov, one of the four defendants in the case concerning the 2014 downing of the MH17 flight in eastern Ukraine, asked the court to interview an author of a report that says China has satellite images of the crash site and to establish if the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team had tried to request this data.
On November 3, the hearings in the case resumed at the Dutch Schiphol Judicial Complex not far from Amsterdam. Russian nationals Pulatov, Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinsky, and Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko are defendants in the case.
During Thursday’s hearing, defence counsel for Pulatov said that he wanted to know why the report claims that a Chinese satellite could have had images of the scene made on the day of the crash and whether the JIT has tried to get such images from the China National Space Administration.
There is every reason to do this, as the US has not provided its satellite images, Boudewijn van Eijck continued. These images may contain extremely important information, he added.
The Dutch court earlier said that it had once again requested the United States to provide satellite data.
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission and aviation experts are working at the crash site of the Malaysian Boeing 777
Flight MH17 crashed with 298 people on board on July 17, 2014, in eastern Ukraine while en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, leaving no survivors. Kiev accused Donbas militias of downing the aircraft, while the self-proclaimed republics said that they had no weapons capable of downing such a plane.
The crash is being investigated by the Dutch-led JIT, which claims that the aircraft was downed by a Buk missile originating from the Russian armed forces. The Russian Foreign Ministry has refuted the accusation as groundless and called the investigation biased.
Russia has said that the JIT ignored the information Moscow gave the Netherlands — the radar data and documents proving that the Buk missile that hit the Boeing belonged to the Ukrainian government forces.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
