DISINFO: The MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter
SUMMARY
The MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter. Talking about the Joint Investigation Team, as the most victims of the catastrophe were the citizens of Australia and the Netherlands, the participation of these two countries in JIT is legitimate, while the participation of Belgium and Ukraine is “suspicious”. There was absolutely no ground to involve Belgium in the investigation. One should take into account though, that the country is the brain centre (sic!) of both the EU and the NATO. Also, Kyiv’s participation is questionable, as it is the main suspect in shooting down the flight.
RESPONSE
It is a pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative aiming to discredit the International Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and the progress made in the investigation of the downing of the flight MH17. A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is an investigation team set up for a fixed period, based on an agreement between two or more EU Member States and/ or competent authorities, for a specific purpose. On the one hand, two Europol member states should participate in a JIT, according to Europol. That is the reason why Belgium is involved in its work. On the other hand, there has been no information on any activities of Belgium in the criminal investigation of the downing of MH17. Therefore it is safe to say that Belgium's role in the JIT is rather formal. The JIT, which is comprised of the Dutch Public Prosecution Service officials and the Dutch police, along with police and criminal justice authorities from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, and Ukraine - has concluded that flight MH17 was shot down on 17 July 2014 by a missile of the 9M38 series, launched by a BUK-TELAR, from farmland in the vicinity of Pervomaiskiy. On the basis of the investigation conducted by the JIT, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service will prosecute Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, Oleg Pulatov, and Leonid Kharchenko for causing the crash of MH17 and murdering the 298 persons on board. The trial opened on 9 March in the Netherlands. The European Union and NATO called on the Russian Federation to accept its responsibility and to fully cooperate with all efforts to establish accountability. On the basis of the JIT’s conclusions, the Netherlands and Australia are convinced that Russia is responsible for the deployment of the BUK installation that was used to down MH17. The two governments are formally holding Russia accountable. Find further disinformation narratives here about how The Netherlands is going to sabotage the MH17 trial, The MH17 trial will be a show process, and that There was no BUK, MH17 crashed because of an explosion on board.