The Culprits Named !

It has been five long years since all 298 passengers and crew of a Malaysian Airlines flight passing over Ukraine met their deaths when an anti aircraft missile exploded beside their plane, tearing it apart and scattering the wreckage across something between an invasion and a civil war below.

Recovery of the bodies - which included 38 Australians - was delayed while negotiations for access needed approval from the shady forces engaged in the hostilities and news stories carried pictures of a Russian army Buk missile launching vehicle scuttling back across the Russian border with a missile glaringly missing from the ordinance it carried.

An investigation of this crime has been painstakingly carried out by the National Prosecutors Office of the Netherlands despite Russian stone walling.   The wreckage of Malaysian flight  MH17 has been reassembled in a hangar and clearly shows the intrusion of shrapnel that brough down the plane in flight. At long last the individuals who caused that missile to be launched have been identified and prosecutions in an international court are ready to proceed.

It is evident that this prosecution will be held " in absentia ". because three of the culprits are serving officers in the Russian military with links to Russian security and they are safely behind the Russian border.   The other has a civilian role in the breakaway segment of the Dombas region and is unlikely to be given up for trial by the rebel regime.

Civilian airliners from many nations had been overpassing this war zone in Ukraine in the belief that the height they flew put them beyond the range of surface to air missiles.  The war on the ground was mainly involving small arms but is was supported by Russian intelligence services and high ranking Russians approved the movement of a Buk missile unit over the border.   It is three of those officers who face prosecution for those deaths.

The Ukrainian invasion is a move to unsettle the Ukrainian government and Russian soldiers had removed their identification patches.  Russia will most likely ignore the prosecution and the best that can be hoped for will be international arrest warrants issued on the four men identified.  Should they ever travel outside the Russian border they could be arrested and put on trial.  The Russian government will ensure that never happens.

The world airline industry has learned a lesson from this tragedy.  Passenger aircraft no longer overfly war zones as a precaution against a similar event and consequently it is unlikely to happen again.   Russia will continue to deny responsibility, despite the clear evidence and little has changed in the ongoing war on terrorists who seem determined to target aircraft with bombs to underscore their war on the west.

All that can be said about the MH17 tragedy is that this aircraft happened to be in the wrong place - at precisely the wrong time.