The Dutch safety board and the maker of BUK missile systems, Almaz-Antey, release their separate reports on last year’s downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17.
We're following the Almaz-Antey report on MH17.
13 October 2015
Kiev will work on launching political and legal processes to find the culprits of the MH17 crash and prosecute them, said Pavel Klimkin, Ukraine’s FM. He added that he found the results of the DBS report “objective.”
Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) said in a statement on Tuesday that it failed to receive both the preliminary Dutch report and the final one. It said that the IAC was not involved in the MH17 crash investigation. One of the IAC experts was invited by the international commission to aid in the the decryption of the MH17 black boxes in August 2014.
The MH17 flight was downed from a rebel-held area in eastern Ukraine, Tjibbe Joustra, head of the Dutch Safety Board, said speaking in the Netherlands’ parliament, TASS reported. Speaking at the DBS conference earlier in the day, he did not specify to which side in the conflict the territory belonged from which the missile had been fired.
The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) both ignored Russian BUK missile producer Almaz-Antey’s results and failed to accept an invitation to Russia to study materials relating to the MH17 crash which had remained in the possession of the arms manufacturer, spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Tuesday. She added that analytics provided by Rosaviatsiya (Russia’s aviation authority) and submitted to investigators were disregarded as well.
“That is why serious doubts [exist over whether] ... the investigation conducted in the Netherlands was aimed at establishing the real causes of the plane crash, rather than justifying the previously-made accusations,” she said.
“We were barred from the investigation under various pretexts. And all of a sudden, Russia's cooperation became necessary after the Dutch Safety Board published the report with 'ready' conclusions,” she added.
She also questioned the peculiarity of the fact that the discovery of the missile wreckage was made a year after the crash. She added that before the discovery it was reported that almost all of the debris from the crash had been recovered.
Dutch Safety Board simulates MH17 being hit by BUK missile
British Prime Minister David Cameron says the report released by the Dutch Safety Board advances the search for the truth regarding how MH17 was downed.
“We have always been clear that justice must be done for all of the victims of MH17 and today’s report brings us one step closer to establishing the truth. We, alongside our partners, will continue to send a clear message; those responsible for downing this plane will be held to account,” the PM said in a statement.
The Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong says that members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) are considering setting up an independent international court to try and effectively prosecute those responsible for the downing of flight MH17.
"As part of the JIT, Malaysia remains single-minded in our pursuit of decisive action that will lead to prosecution of the trigger-happy criminals," he said.
Aside from Malaysia, the JIT also includes Netherlands, Belgium, Ukraine and Australia.
The MH17 investigation will not be completed in 2015, the Dutch safety board said.
The Dutch report on the MH17 tragedy doesn’t have substantial evidence to claim the plane was downed from the area controlled by eastern Ukrainian militia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.
"It's a source of regret that, despite all Russia's repeated and lengthy attempts to organise the investigation in such a way that it is comprehensive and unbiased, and for it to consider all the information we have ... there is an obvious attempt to draw a biased conclusion, and carry out political orders," Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
Ukraine’s deputy PM rejects all accusations on untimely airspace closure as ‘unsubstantiated’.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has asked Russia to provide "complete cooperation" with the criminal investigation into the MH17 crash.
The Dutch Safety Board will study the results of two experiments presented by BUK manufacturer Almaz-Antey.
At a meeting with victims' families earlier Tuesday, Joustra said passengers who weren’t killed by the impact of the missile would have been rendered unconscious by the sudden decompression of the aircraft and lack of oxygen at 33,000 feet.
The DSB limits the missile launch location to the area of 320 sq km in eastern Ukraine, the report says.
" The crash of flight MH17 on 17 July 2014 was caused by the detonation of a 9N314M-type warhead launched from the eastern part of Ukraine using a Buk missile system", this and other details can be found in the press release which followed the DSB presentation.
A PDF version of the report is available here. You can also read a 20-page summary.
The Russian government challenged the finding that a Buk missile shot down the plane, Joustra said. The Dutch Safety Board extensively studied Moscow's comments, he assured.
An additional probe is needed to establish the location of the missile launch, Joustra said, concluding the presentation. No questions were taken.
Three crew members were killed in the cockpit when the Buk missile hit, Joustra said ruling out a bomb on the plane, air-to-air strikes, or meteor strike.
It can’t be ruled out that more pieces of MH17 wreckage will be found in future, the Dutch Safety Board said.
The plane fell apart in the air and the fragments scattered on the Ukrainian territory, in a 15km radius, according to Joustra. After the explosion, the head part of the plane separated from the body.
Ukraine aviation regulators admitted that their military used arms in the country's east that could strike civil aviation, the Dutch Safety Board stated.
Almost all operators were flying over the armed conflict zone, as no one thought that civil aviation was at risk, the Dutch Safety Board said.
“Nobody gave a thought to a possible threat to civil aviation”, Joustra said introducing an animated video of MH17’s last moments.
It pointed out that three other aircraft were flying in the area when MH17 was hit by a Buk missile.
The missile damaged the Malaysian Airlines Boeing from the left side, Joustra said adding the Ukrainian authorities failed to take precautions for the 165 different commercial flights which flew along the same corridor as the downed plane.
There were sufficient grounds to close the airspace, but the Ukrainian authorities failed to do so, the DSB representative said.
“None of the parties involved recognized the risk from the armed conflict on the ground,” Joustra said.
The Dutch Safety Board says that the MH17 Boeing was taken down with a BUK missile launcher.
"The weapon used was a 9N314M-model warhead carried on the 9M38-series of missiles, as installed on the Buk surface-to-air missile system," the report reads.
The investigation into the MH17 crash was confidential and wasn’t disclosed to governments in advance, Australian Ambassador to Russia Paul Myler said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
"We still haven’t seen the final report because of the professionalism of the Dutch Safety Board," Myler said, adding that the investigation was carried out in full confidentiality.
Tjibbe Joustra, Dutch Dafety Board chairman, has started to release the findings.
Almaz-Antey conducted two experiments simulating explosions near MH17.
They found out that the missile was an older, decommissioned BUK model 9M38 fired from an area under Ukrainian forces’ control, contradicting the data of the Dutch-led investigation.
Almaz-Antey representatives are sure their theory as to how the crash happened is correct, and it could be verified by finding fragments of the decommissioned 9M38 missile in the bodies and baggage of the crash victims.
The Netherlands only gave Russian experts photos of fragments belonging to the missile that could have taken down the MH17 Boeing, Almaz-Antey said.
“The missile fragments – and we mean not the destructive elements, but precisely the fragments of the missile – were presented to us in photos of very average quality. Some of them raise doubts,” Almaz-Antey representatives said.
Almaz-Antey spent 10 million rubles (US$160,000) on the experiments during its investigation into the MH17 crash, the company’s CEO Yan Novikov said.
Several of the missile fragment photos revealed by the international investigation commission raise doubts, Almaz-Antey representatives said.
Almaz-Antey removed the ‘classified’ status from part of its data in order to present the information on missiles to the international committee on the MH17 crash.
Almaz-Antey submitted a report on its first experiment to the international commission investigating the MH17 downing, but these documents were ignored, according to CEO Yan Novikov.
“In August, we submitted documents on the first experiment to the commission, but the results were ignored again in the [commission’s] preliminary report,” Novikov said.
The Almaz-Antey report says MH17 was shot down by an older BUK 9M38 missile.
The last BUK 9M38 missile was produced in the Soviet Union in 1986, and the expiration period of such a missile is 25 years, including all possible prolongations.
After the expiration date, the use of such missiles is prohibited and they must be decommissioned, Almaz-Antey reps said.
“The main method of proof that the airplane was downed from the direction of Snezhnoye was the reenactment of the process and an explanation of the area of damage to the outer body of the aircraft. This can fully show that, actually, if the missile was on a head-on course, specific areas would be damaged, but this reenactment in particular does not completely explain the actual angle of approach of the destructive elements,” Novikov told journalists.
If the missile that downed MH17 had flown head-on into the plane, as the Dutch commission stated, it would have hit the starboard side, but the explosion was on the port side, Almaz-Antey representatives said.
The Dutch commission presented only two types of destructive elements, whereas there should be three types, an Almaz-Antey representative said.
If the missile had been launched from Snezhnoye, not a single destructive element could have hit the engine and the left wing, according to Almaz-Antey officials.
“We conducted 3D modeling, doing it in such a way that it became possible to see what types of destructive elements hit the plane’s fuselage. If the missile had been launched from the [Ukraine-controlled] Zaroshchenskoye, at least 22 fragments should have hit the left engine. If approaching from Snezhnoye, not a single fragment could have hit the left engine and the left wing,” the company said.
The damage done to MH17 was partly caused by the destruction of the Boeing’s construction elements, not purely the missile’s destructive elements.
The missile exploded over 20 meters from the left engine of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing, Novikov said.
The experiments have shown that destructive elements ran along MH17’s body at a near zero-degree angle, Novikov said.
The CEO has also called the sanctions against Almaz-Antey unfair.
“Our participation in the press conferences is directly linked with the wrongful sanctions against us, in connection with the tragedy of the passenger Boeing which was taken down,” Yan Novikov said.
Tests by BUK system producer contradict Dutch commission on type of missile used to down MH17 over Ukraine.
The investigation results confirm that MH17 was taken down from territory in control of the Ukrainian forces. "Today we can say for sure that the Malaysian Boeing was shot down by a BUK missile 9M38 from direction Zaroshenskoye".
The full-scale experiment demonstrates that MH17 could have been taken down by an even earlier missile modification than previously supposed, Almaz-Antey CEO Novikov said.
"During the experiment it became perfectly clear that, if MH17 was brought down by a BUK-M1 missile, that was the 9M38 missile, which has no strike elements shaped as I-beam," Novikov said.
First, the CEO of Almaz-Antey, Yan Novikov, will speak about the experiment. After that, a three-minute video will show how Almaz-Antey prepared and conducted the test.
Then, the chief constructor’s counsel will discuss the experiment and its results
His comments will be followed by a Q&A session.