Ndespite the cooperation with the investigation, the immigration service refused to grant asylum to the Russians, considering their story implausible. They did not officially become witnesses in the case, the Dutch newspaper notes
The crash site of the Malaysian Boeing 777 aircraft operating Flight MH17 on the route Amsterdam & mdash;Kuala Lumpur, July 2014
A Russian couple who testified in the case of the crash of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 in the Donbass in 2014 may be expelled from the Netherlands to their homeland. This is reported by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant with reference to the documents that turned out to be the editorial office.
Russians named Igor and Elena (fictitious names) moved to the Netherlands in 2016. They appealed to the authorities of the country with a request to grant asylum, but the first application was rejected. Then in 2018, Elena appealed to the judicial authorities and said that she had information about the persons involved in the crash of flight MH17.
The publication notes that Elena did not become an official witness in the investigation of the plane crash, because her testimony, the essence of which is not disclosed, was not valuable enough to provide her with protection. At the same time, the prosecutor of the National Prosecutor’s Office of Rotterdam, Joris Belien, noted that the truthfulness of the words of the Russian woman is beyond doubt.
In a repeated application for asylum, the couple reported that they might be threatened by the FSB. But the Dutch Immigration Service (IND) still refused the Russians. Officials considered their words implausible, in particular, due to the fact that they did not immediately report information about the plane crash upon arrival in the Netherlands.
Thus, the couple who have been in the Netherlands illegally for five years can be extradited to Russia. Now their lawyer is studying the possibility of a new request for legalization in the country.
RBC sent a request to the press service of the Russian Embassy in the Netherlands and the Center for Public Relations of the FSB of Russia.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014. About three hours after taking off from the Dutch capital, he fell on the territory of the Donetsk region of Ukraine. All the people on board-283 passengers and 15 crew members-were killed. Ukraine, the LPR, the DPR denied involvement in the fact that the plane was shot down.
The Special Investigation Team (JIT) concluded that the plane was shot down by a missile fired from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system belonging to the 53rd Air Defense Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces. According to investigators, the complex was delivered to the Donbass on the day of the crash of the liner, and later taken back to Russian territory.
The Dutch prosecutor’s office accuses the former head of intelligence of the self-proclaimed DPR Sergey Dubinsky, ex-deputy head of intelligence Oleg Pulatov, an FSB officer and ex-defense minister of the DPR Igor Girkin (Strelkov) and a militia member Leonid Kharchenko of the crash of the plane.
The MH17 trial began in The Hague last spring. Moscow has repeatedly denied the involvement of its military personnel in the plane crash. The Russian Defense Ministry stated that the missile that shot down the plane for the Buk was produced in 1986, handed over to the Ukrainian SSR at that time, after which it did not leave the territory of the country.
The Russian side did not rule out that the Boeing was shot down by the Ukrainian military, and pointed to the refusal of the JIT to cooperate with Moscow. The court in The Hague refused to consider alternative versions of the crash of the liner.
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