colonial daze.....

Should the Dutch Court decision on the downing of Malaysian airliner MH 17 set a precedent for the trial of weapons suppliers?

On November 17, the District Court of The Hague found Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Leonid Kharchenko, guilty of contributing to the downing of Malaysian Airways flight MH17 and the murder of all 298 individuals on board.

By Paul Malone

The three were found to have helped arrange the deployment and transport into Ukraine of the Russian BUK missile system that was used to shoot down the plane, though they were not the ones who physically pulled the trigger.

A sentence of life imprisonment was imposed on the three men.

The English summary translation of the court decision states:

“The crew [that fired the missile] appears to have thought the missile was being fired not at a civilian but at a military aircraft. Even in that case, there is intent and premeditation to shoot down that aircraft and take the lives of those on board.”

The judges said that firing a Buk missile was possible, only if it was available and placed on a suitable launch site. In their opinion those entrusted with such a responsibility had an essential role in the deployment of the missile and in ultimately firing it and “they may be regarded as co-perpetrators.”

In considering this tragedy it should not be forgotten that when the plane was shot down in July 2014 fighting was raging between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces and Ukrainian planes had been bombing pro-Russian towns in the region. In the week before the downing of MH-17 the BBC reported that 11 people had died when the rebel-held town of Snizhne in the Donetsk region was bombed.

I have concerns about the court ruling.

The process of investigating and prosecuting the MH 17 case is very different from that following the similar downing of the Iranian A300 Airbus in July 1988, a passenger plane shot down by the US missile cruiser Vincennes.

The Iranian airliner was in a commercial air corridor, over Iran’s territorial waters, on a scheduled flight and sending out squawks identifying itself as a civilian airliner. The airliner was climbing when it was brought down by the Vincennes which apparently mistook it for a diving, much smaller F14A Tomcat fighter. All 290 people on board the plane died.

As far as I am aware no Western leader called for the captain of the warship, or any of his crew, or any higher placed US official, or weapons supplier, to be brought to trial.

It took until 1996 for the US to reach a settlement and express deep regret over the loss of life. No-one was charged with murder, never mind being found guilty.

I would have no problem if future courts decide to charge and convict those who supply weapons used to commit murder – a logic which underpins part of the Dutch court’s decision. But the courts should not selectively choose who to charge, based on whether the accused are from “baddie” countries.

Those who supply the Russians with weapons used in Ukraine could be prosecuted. And so too the US and British manufacturers who supplied the weapons used in the illegal war on Iraq.

Those responsible for the Iranian A 300 Airbus downing could also be brought before a court. But in the same way as the Russians have shielded their nationals from the Dutch court, the Americans will prevent any action being taken against their military.

In an ideal world prosecutions would curtail the activities of suppliers of weapons used in a host of conflicts and criminal activities around the world.

But I fear prosecutions are not going to happen. Why? Simply because Western countries are among the world’s largest suppliers of weapons and show no sign of limiting the activities of companies that generate jobs and huge profit.

According to Statista, between 2017 and 2021, the world’s largest exporters of major weapons were: the US with 39 per cent; Russia 19; France 11; Germany 4.6; China 4.5; Italy 3.1; and the UK 2.9.

Can you imagine a world where the chief executives of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE, or the Russian companies Almaz-Antey, Sukhoi and Irkut were hauled before an international court because their weapons had been used to kill civilians?

If only.

https://johnmenadue.com/mh-17-court-decision-questions/

ONE OF THE MISERY AND MYSTERY OF THIS SAGA IS THAT THERE IS 90 PER CENT CHANCES THAT THIS "INCIDENT" WAS A FALSE FLAG EVENT. THE COMMENT BELOW BY GEORGE VENTURINY EXPLAINS A THEORY THAT IS STILL VALID THOUGH HAS BEEN DISMISSED BECAUSE IT DOES NOT FIT THE "BLAME THE RUSSIANS" MANTRA.

— ANOTHER ANALYST ON YOU TUBE (POSSIBLY SINCE REMOVED — CHECK) EXPLAINED THAT THE BUK-MISSILE UNIT RECORDING USED TO PROVE THE RUSSIANS DID IT WAS A UKRAINIAN BUK-UNIT PICTURED ON A DIFFERENT DAY/MONTH — AND SEEN LEAVING THE CONTESTED "AREA" BY GOING BACK TOWARDS UKRAINE (NOT RUSSIA). AS WELL THERE WAS NO RECORDING OF A MISSILE BEING TRACED ON THE DAY OF THE "INCIDENT". THAT IS TO SAY THAT SUBSEQUENT IMAGES OF "THE" MISSILE TRACE, PRODUCED SIX MONTH LATER, WAS NOT THE MISSILE PICTURED ON THE DAY.

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By Gus Leonisky at 29 Nov 2022 - 8:33am
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we'll never know.....

THE DOWNING OF MALAYSIA AIRLINES MH 17 OBSERVED FROM AUSTRALIA
by George Venturini *
On 17 July 2014 Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-2H6ER, operating as flight MH17, departed Amsterdam Schiphol in the Netherlands at 10.31 a.m. on a scheduled passenger flight to Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. On the way it crashed in eastern Ukraine. Data from the flight data recorder and the digital cockpit voice recorder both stopped at 12.20:03. All 298 passengers and crew were killed.
According to the passenger manifest released by Malaysia Airlines there were on board: 192 Dutch, 29 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, 10 British, 4 Belgians, 4 Germans, 3 Filipinos, 1 Canadian and 1 New Zealander. All 15 crew members were from Malaysia. The nationalities indicated are based on the passports which were used for check-in. Some of the passengers had multiple nationalities, causing differences in nationality numbers published in the media. Eleven passengers were aliens with permanent residence in Australia.
It was an unspeakable tragedy and a criminal act which sent shock waves around the world. Nobody yet knows who was responsible for this crime, despite ‘western’ media and governments pointing the finger at either the rebel forces in eastern Ukraine - whom the ‘West’ accuses Russia of arming - or the Russian military itself.
Amid claims and counter claims by all sides, each force denies responsibility and there is no obvious motive for any force deliberately to carry out such an atrocity.
The United Nations Security Council has called for “a full, thorough and independent international investigation.” But, whether this has any hope of leading to clarity on the incident remains to be seen.
Yet many ‘western’ governments, with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott joining in, are exploiting this tragedy and using it to escalate rhetoric and tensions with Russia, raising the prospect of the Ukrainian war expanding.

READ MORE:

https://www.countercurrents.org/venturini031014.pdf

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By Gus Leonisky at 29 Nov 2022 - 8:36am
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suspended......

THE INVESTIGATION IN THE MH17 DRAMA HAS BEEN "SUSPENDED" BECAUSE...

OH I SEE, THE PROSECUTORS WANT TO IMPLICATE PUTIN DIRECTLY, BUT THE INVESTIGATORS CANNOT TAKE HIM TO COURT WHILE HE IS A HEAD OF STATE. SO ONE CAN SEE PUTIN STAYING AT THE HELM OF RUSSIA UNTIL HIS DEATH IN 2067. BY THEN HE WOULD HAVE ACHIEVED ALL THE GOALS HE SET OUT TO DO, WHILE LITTLE SHIT ZELENSKY WOULD STILL BE ALIVE — IN A MENTAL HOSPITAL FOR DELUDED NAPOLEONS.

YES WE ARE TOLD BY CONVINCED JOURNALISTS OF THEIR OWN CLEAN TOILET FLUSH:

International prosecutors say they found "strong indications" Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the use of a Russian missile system that shot down Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Key points:

Investigators said further progress in the case was restricted by a lack of cooperation from Moscow
Evidence "strongly" pointed towards the Russian president having signed off on the supply of the missile that downed the plane
Putin will not be pursued as he is protected by immunity as a head of state

Speaking from the Hague, representatives from the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which included representatives from the Netherlands and Australia, presented evidence implicating Mr Putin, including intercepted phone calls.

They did not suggest Mr Putin ordered the aircraft to be shot down.

Dutch prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer was careful not to label Mr Putin a "suspect", instead saying there were "strong indications, but we do not reach that high bar that it is a closed case".

As a head of state, Mr Putin is protected by immunity under Dutch law, which means the investigators are unable to pursue prosecution at the moment.

"Only after he is not a head of state can we look into what is next. Step by step," Ms van Boetzelaer said.

MH17 revisited....

By Steve Rosenberg

The last time I saw Igor Girkin was five years ago in the stairwell of a Moscow news agency.

"Would you consider giving me an interview?" I asked. "No," he replied sharply and scurried away.

I saw him again today. No stairwell. This time, Girkin was in a caged dock surrounded by police in the Moscow City Court.

Along with other media we were allowed in to film him for just one minute before the end of his trial.

A police dog kept barking. Girkin found that amusing. The verdict less so. Minutes later he was found guilty on extremism charges and sentenced to four years in a penal colony.

This wasn't his first conviction.

In The Hague in 2022, in absentia, Girkin was found guilty of the murder of 298 people: the passengers and crew of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

The Boeing jet had been shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 by Russian-controlled forces in the early stages of Russia's war there.

Girkin was one of three men sentenced to life imprisonment. A judgement he ignored.

A year after we'd met in the stairwell, I managed to get through to Girkin on the phone and ask him about the Hague.

"I do not recognise the authority of the Dutch court on this matter," he told me.

"I am a military man and I am not going to accept that a civilian court in a foreign country has the authority to convict a person who took part in someone else's civil war, only because their civilians were killed.

"Do you know who shot down [the plane]?"

"The rebels didn't shoot down the Boeing. I have nothing more to say."

"If it wasn't the rebels, then was it Russian soldiers?" I asked.

"That's it. Goodbye." He hung up.

Now he is going to prison. But not for mass murder. And not for life.

So, who exactly is Girkin - also known under his pseudonym as Igor Strelkov - and why has a Moscow court sent him to jail?

He is a former FSB officer in Russia's domestic security service. In 2014 he played a key role in the fighting in Ukraine's Donbas region: a conflict engineered and orchestrated by Moscow.

He organised and commanded pro-Russia militias in eastern Ukraine.

The Dutch court would later rule that Russia had been in control of the separatist forces fighting in eastern Ukraine and that Girkin had helped to bring the Buk missile system into Ukraine that was used to shoot down flight MH17.

Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, ultranationalist Girkin became a prominent pro-war blogger.

He became increasingly critical of the way the Russian authorities were waging the war: not hard enough, in his view.

He founded a hard line nationalist movement called The Club of Angry Patriots.

His problems began when he started to take that anger out on President Vladimir Putin.

Public criticisms of the Russian president turned to insults. In a post last year, Girkin described Putin as "a non-entity" and "a cowardly waste of space".

A few days later he was arrested. Now he's been tried and convicted.

Of course, a four-year prison sentence is mild in comparison to other recent punishments delivered by Russian courts.

Last year pro-democracy activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to a quarter of a century behind bars after being convicted of treason, a case he and his supporters insist was politically motivated.

How would the "Angry Patriots" react to Girkin's prison term? Would they pour on to the streets in protest?

READ FROM TOP.

ONE OF THE MISERY AND MYSTERY OF THIS SAGA IS THAT THERE IS 90 PER CENT CHANCES THAT THIS "INCIDENT" WAS A FALSE FLAG EVENT. THE COMMENT BELOW BY GEORGE VENTURINI EXPLAINS A THEORY THAT IS STILL VALID THOUGH HAS BEEN DISMISSED BECAUSE IT DOES NOT FIT THE "BLAME THE RUSSIANS" MANTRA.

— ANOTHER ANALYST ON YOU TUBE (POSSIBLY SINCE REMOVED — CHECK) EXPLAINED THAT THE BUK-MISSILE UNIT RECORDING, USED TO PROVE THE RUSSIANS DID IT, WAS A UKRAINIAN BUK-UNIT PICTURED ON A DIFFERENT DAY/MONTH — AND SEEN LEAVING THE CONTESTED "AREA" BY GOING BACK TOWARDS UKRAINE (NOT RUSSIA). AS WELL THERE WAS NO RECORDING OF A MISSILE BEING TRACED ON THE DAY OF THE "INCIDENT". THAT IS TO SAY THAT SUBSEQUENT IMAGES OF "THE" MISSILE TRACE, PRODUCED SIX MONTH LATER, WAS NOT THE MISSILE PICTURED ON THE DAY. IT IS MOST LIKELY THAT A UKRAINIAN WARPLANE SHOT MH17 DOWN WITH 30 MM CALIBRE BULLETS INTO THE WINGS AND THE PILOT AREA (VENTURINI INVESTIGATION).

READ MORE:

https://www.countercurrents.org/venturini031014.pdf

THE LAST TIME ANY REPORTER SAW JULIAN ASSANGE LIVE WAS HIS (NOW DEAD) FRIEND JOHN PILGER... TIME FOR STEVE ROSENBERG TO PUT A SOCK ON HIS DICKY WRITINGS...

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By Gus Leonisky at 26 Jan 2024 - 3:31pm
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MH17 no-guilt......

CN Founder Robert Parry’s reporting on the MH-17 air disaster was vindicated when the World Court last week refused to blame Russia for shooting down the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in 2014.

WE HAVE BEEN ON THE FOREFRONT HERE AS WELLLLLLLL.... READ FROM TOP....

Robert Parry was in the forefront of questioning official narratives about the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in Ukrainian airspace on July 17, 2014, which Western officials immediately, and inquiries later, blamed on Russia.

But the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Jan. 31 refused to assign responsibility to Moscow and rejected Ukraine’s 2017 request that it order Russia to pay compensation.

The ruling vindicated Parry who came under heavy criticism from Bellingcat and the Australian version of the 60 Minutes program for his reporting questioning the official Western story.

Parry wrote numerous articles on the affair, including:

Jan. 19, 2015: The Danger of an MH-17 ‘Cold Case;

May 18, 2015: Fake Evidence Blaming Russia for MH-17?;

May 20, 2015: You Be the Judge;

Oct. 20, 2015: MH-17 Case: ‘Old’ Journalism vs. ‘New’;

July 3, 2016: MH-17 Probe’s Torture-Implicated Ally

July 19, 2016: Fraud Alleged in NYT’s MH-17 Report;

Sept. 29, 2016: The Official and Implausible MH-17 Scenario,

The following is the republication of one of these articles:

The Ever-Curiouser MH-17 Case

March 16, 2016

Exclusive: The shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine has served as a potent propaganda club against Russia but the U.S. government is hiding key evidence that could solve the mystery, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry
Special to Consortium News

The curious mystery surrounding the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, gets more and more curious as the U.S. government and Dutch investigators balk at giving straightforward answers to the simplest of questions even when asked by the families of the victims.

Adding to the mystery Dutch investigators have indicated that the Dutch Safety Board did not request radar information from the United States, even though Secretary of State John Kerry indicated just three days after the crash that the U.S. government possessed data that pinpointed the location of the suspected missile launch that allegedly downed the airliner, killing all 298 people onboard.

Although Kerry claimed that the U.S. government knew the location almost immediately, Dutch investigators now say they hope to identify the spot sometime “in the second half of the year,” meaning that something as basic as the missile-launch site might remain unknown to the public more than two years after the tragedy.

The families of the Dutch victims, including the father of a Dutch-American citizen, have been pressing for an explanation about the slow pace of the investigation and the apparent failure to obtain relevant data from the U.S. and other governments.

I spent time with the family members in early February at the Dutch parliament in The Hague as opposition parliamentarians, led by Christian Democrat Pieter Omtzigt, unsuccessfully sought answers from the government about the absence of radar data and other basic facts.

When answers have been provided to the families and the public, they are often hard to understand, as if to obfuscate what information the investigation possesses or doesn’t possess. For instance, when I asked the U.S. State Department whether the U.S. government had supplied the Dutch with radar data and satellite images, I received the following response, attributable to “a State Department spokesperson”: “While I won’t go into the details of our law enforcement cooperation in the investigation, I would note that Dutch officials said March 8 that all information asked of the United States has been shared.”

I wrote back thanking the spokesperson for the response, but adding:

“I must say it seems unnecessarily fuzzy. Why can’t you just say that the U.S. government has provided the radar data cited by Secretary Kerry immediately after the tragedy? Or the U.S. government has provided satellite imagery before and after the shootdown? Why the indirect and imprecise phrasing? …

I’ve spent time with the Dutch families of the victims, including the father of a U.S.-Dutch citizen, and I can tell you that they are quite disturbed by what they regard as double-talk and stalling. I would like to tell them that my government has provided all relevant data in a cooperative and timely fashion. But all I get is this indirect and imprecise word-smithing.”

The State Department spokesperson wrote back, “I understand your questions, and also the importance of the view of these families so devastated by this tragedy. However, I am going to have to leave our comments as below.”

Propaganda Value

This lack of transparency, of course, has a propaganda value since it leaves in place the widespread public impression that ethnic Russian rebels and Russian President Vladimir Putin were responsible for the 298 deaths, a rush to judgment that Secretary Kerry and other senior U.S. officials (and the Western news media) encouraged in July 2014.

Once that impression took hold there has been little interest in Official Washington to clarify the mystery especially as evidence has emerged implicating elements of the Ukrainian military. For instance, Dutch intelligence has reported (and U.S. intelligence has implicitly confirmed) that the only operational Buk anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, were under the control of the Ukrainian military.

In a Dutch report released last October, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) reported that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian government.

MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. MIVD said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country.”

The intelligence agency added that the rebels lacked that capability: “Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude.”

One could infer a similar finding by reading a U.S. “Government Assessment” released by the Director of National Intelligence on July 22, 2014, five days after the crash, seeking to cast suspicion on the ethnic Russian rebels and Putin by noting military equipment that Moscow had provided the rebels. But most tellingly the list did not include Buk anti-aircraft missiles. In other words, in the context of trying to blame the rebels and Putin, U.S. intelligence could not put an operational Buk system in the rebels’ hands.

So, perhaps the most logical suspicion would be that the Ukrainian military, then engaged in an offensive in the east and fearing a possible Russian invasion, moved its Buk missile systems up to the front and an undisciplined crew fired a missile at a suspected Russian aircraft, bringing down MH-17 by accident.

That was essentially what I was told by a source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts in July and August 2014. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts” and “The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case.”]

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/07/robert-parry-vindicated-on-mh-17-reporting/

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https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/49833

By Gus Leonisky at 7 Feb 2024 - 7:51pm
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colonial daze.....

we'll never know.....

suspended......

MH17 revisited....

MH17 no-guilt......

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