Disinfo: Russian defendant in MH17 trial denied access to own case file

Summary

Since the Dutch court presiding over the MH17crash case is not obligated to translate all the case materials — with the case file consisting of 36,000 pages — the sole Russian defendant represented at the trial may be left without the possibility to study all the documents. According to a court representative, if the defendants are present in the courtroom and cannot understand Dutch or English, the judge will provide a certified interpreter. Translation of the file case can be provided by the lawyer of the defendants, but not by the court. The court is in Dutch, so all files and hearings will be in Dutch. No translation other than an interpreter is obligatory.

Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative aiming to discredit the investigation of the Joint International Team (JIT) into the downing of flight MH17. The report implies that without access to the entire 36,000-page case file, the accused Russian national will not be able to mount an effective defence. It also falsely claims that translation of case files and any other relevant documents can only be provided by the lawyer of the defendant. A 10 March statement by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service provides an exhaustive refutation of these concerns, and is thus worth citing at length:

"Before this hearing, the Public Prosecution Service provided a Russian translation of the notice of summons and accusation and the general account. That account is a detailed summary of the case file comprising (in the Dutch version) 147 pages. This took a considerable amount of time. In addition, the Public Prosecution Service has undertaken to provide a Russian translation of the personal case file: an overview of the investigation with regard to the defendant Pulatov of (in the Dutch version) 68 pages. [...] The Public Prosecution Service believes that these documents will provide the defendant with sufficient insight into the charges and the evidence adduced by the Public Prosecution Service. On the basis of these documents and the further discussion of other information in the case file in the consultations with his counsel (with the aid of an interpreter or his Russian lawyer), the defendant should be able to carefully determine the course of action he wishes to adopt during the proceedings."

The statement also makes it clear that translation of other, non-essential documents must be separately requested by the defence counsel, along with an explanation "why the defence considers translation necessary. This is in accordance with Dutch (article 32a, paragraph 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) and European legislation [Article 3, paras. 1-4 of Directive 2010/64/EU]."

Go to search

publication/media

sputniknews.com (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 189
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 12/03/2020
  • Outlet language(s) English
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: The Netherlands, Russia
  • Keywords: MH17
see more

Disinfo: The MH17 show trial is not about justice, but information warfare

The MH17 tragedy is back in the news after the start of this case’s show trial in the Netherlands, which isn’t about bringing the alleged perpetrators to justice or helping the victims’ families find closure, but waging information warfare against Russia in an attempt to “conclusively” pin the blame for this crime on its supposed proxies in Eastern Ukraine so as to ruin President Putin’s international reputation once and for all.

Mar 11, 2020
Disproof

Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative aiming to discredit the International Joint Investigation (JIT) into the downing of flight MH17 and the subsequent trial. The Joint Investigation Team (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. At that time, the area was controlled by pro-Russian fighters. The BUK-TELAR was brought in from the territory of the Russian Federation and subsequently, after having shot down flight MH17, was taken back to the Russian Federation. The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has concluded that the BUK-TELAR used to down MH17 originates from the 53rd Anti Aircraft Missile brigade, a unit of the Russian army from Kursk in the Russian Federation. On the basis of the investigation conducted by the JIT, the Dutch Public Persecution service will persecute Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin, Sergey Nikolayevich Dubinskiy, Oleg Yuldashevich Pulatov, and Leonid Volodymyrovych Kharchenko for causing the crash of MH17 and murdering the 298 persons on board. The public hearing is started on 9 March 2020 in the Netherlands. The European Union and NATO have 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.

Read other disinformation narratives alleging that 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.

Disinfo: Most coronavirus patients are anti-American

Most people who caught the coronavirus are opposed to America.

Mar 11, 2020
Disproof

Conspiracy theory about the 2019-nCoV coronavirus.

There is no evidence that suggests that the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is used as a weapon against other states. It comes from a family of viruses that include other viruses such as SARS and MERS. It was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in central China and has been rapidly spreading with new cases being reported in the Asia-Pacific region as well as Europe, North America and the Middle East, causing almost 30,000 deaths as of 29 March 2020.

Disinfo: Turkey-Greece crisis has taken NATO to its limit

What if a NATO member attacks another member, as it is happening now with Turkey and Greece? In Greece, we are seeing NATO at the edge. Europe is completely dependent on the US.

Mar 11, 2020
Disproof

Despite increasing tensions at the Greek-Turkish border, the situation is far from taking NATO at the edge. This is part of a recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative on NATO, portraying it as a useless, decadent and Russophobic organisation with no role in today’s world. You can see other examples in our database, such as NATO’s alleged obsolescence, cannibalistic character, fascistic tendencies and links to white supremacist ideology, its never-ending provocations, its attempts to block Moscow in its sphere of influence, the Alliance's permanent targeting of Russia and Belarus, its role as a US subjugation tool for other countries and its unreliability to defend its members or the claims that NATO is such a disaster that the US didn’t want its help after 9/11 and that it is spreading the coronavirus in the US.