DPR separatists say they will give Netherlands human remains from MH17
Representatives of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) say that they are willing to give the Netherlands the remains of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 which crashed on 17 July 2014.
The self-proclaimed “DPR Prosecutor General’s Office” reacted in this way to the “reportage” of Patrick Lancaster, who is covering the conflict on the militants’ side.
“Our coworkers, observing criminal procedural norms, have seized the available remains and have carried out an examination of them. The results of the examination showed that part of them could conceivably be human remains,” the separatists’ report stated.
In this regard, the so-called DPR Prosecutor General’s Office “intends to officially approach the Prosecutor General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands with an offer to legally transfer the remains for examination and subsequent inclusion in the investigation materials”.
“In the future we will continue to assist unconditionally with the international investigation of this matter,” the separatists assured.
In August, Patrick Lancaster, who frequently posts on Twitter in Russian and recently got married in the occupied territory, published video material showing that he had found remains which could belong to flight MH17, the bodies of which have not been identified.
Earlier, in January 2017, Dutch journalist Michel Spekkers brought “a whole rubbish bag full of flight MH17 fragments” to his own country from the separatist-held territories of Ukraine, including what may have been human remains, but they were confiscated upon arrival.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Netherlands confirmed that the bone which Spekkers found in the Donbas belonged to one of the victims air disaster, but the rest had no relevance to the case. The relatives of the crash victims then asked for the search for the victims’ remains to be renewed.
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on flight route MH-17 from Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) crashed in the Donetsk province on 17 July 2014, resulting in the deaths of 298 people.
The international team investigating this catastrophe came to the conclusion that the airliner had been hit by a missile fired from a Buk anti-air defense system which came from Russia.
In August 2017, Russia gave the international investigative group new radar-related information about the crash.
Those responsible for the MH-17 catastrophe will be punished according to the Netherlands’ legislation.