Girkin's interview with Gordon to be included in MH17 trial materials
The court in the Netherlands in the case of the downed Boeing flight MH17 over the Donbas in 2014 intends to include into the case materials an interview of one of the former commanders of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor Girkin, with Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon, reports Deutsche Welle, citing the presiding judge, Hendrik Steenhuis.
This is an interview that Gordon posted on his YouTube channel on May 18.
In a nearly four-hour conversation with the journalist, Girkin acknowledged "indirect responsibility" for the crash. At the same time, he insisted that the militants had not shot down the plane.
After the interview with Girkin, representatives of Ukrainian nationalist and veteran organizations staged a picket under Gordon's office. Participants painted the facade and threw eggs at the building.
In response, Gordon said that the interview was recorded "in cooperation" with the special services of Ukraine, and "the memory sticks from the interview are already in The Hague." The SBU said that the initiative to interview Girkin belongs to the journalist himself, but promised to analyze the information voiced. The Ukrainian attorney general's office called the interview "valuable information" and thanked Gordon.
The trial of four defendants in the crash of flight MH17 resumed on 8 June in the Netherlands.
Three Russian citizens, Sergei Dubinsky, Igor Girkin and Oleg Pulatov, as well as Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko have the status of the accused. They were also absent during the first meeting in March.
Pulatov is represented in the trial by a team of lawyers, two of them are at the meeting today.
The judge noted that the case would be heard in the absence of the accused and all the data presented would apply to all four unless otherwise stated separately.
The court was presented with photos from U.S. satellites, which show the Buk missile. The U.S. military did not provide the photos in their original form to the public, but they allowed the Dutch representative to study the sources, and a memorandum will be attached to the case file (where copies of the images are likely to be copied in a smaller resolution).
On July 17, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down near the city of Shakhtarsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. All crew members and passengers were killed, a total of 298 people, including 80 children.