Lawsuit filed against Ukraine over Malaysian Airlines flight MH17
Several relatives of victims from the Boeing 777 crash filed lawsuits in the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) against Ukraine for the crash of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over the Donbas on July 17, 2014, Kommersant reported. The lawsuit was filed by German citizens Elena Joppa and Tim Laushet, living in Australia, as well as Chris and Denise Kenke, relatives of passengers killed in the disaster. They hold Kiev partially responsible because the airspace over the territory where the fighting took place was not closed to civil aircraft.
They requested €1 million in compensation. According to them, Kiev didn’t close the airspace because it didn’t want to abandon the millions of dollars that Ukraine receives from more than 700 daily flights over Ukrainian airspace. The claim was filed to the ECHR directly.
“Taking into consideration the political and legal situation in Ukraine, the applicants believe that their case can’t receive an impartial and fair trial there at the moment,” the publication says. On October 13, 2015, the Security Council of the Netherlands published the final report on the crash of flight MH17.
According to experts, the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down over the Donetsk region by a missile launched by a Buk anti-aircraft missile complex on July 17, 2014. The West has accused Russian-backed separatists of launching the missile, while Moscow blames the Ukrainian military. The crash of Boeing 777 flight MH17 claimed the lives of 15 crew members and 283 passengers, including 80 children. Most of the victims were citizens of the Netherlands, Malaysia or Australia.