WASHINGTON, September 9 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmila Chernova - The preliminary report issued by the Dutch Safety Board in The Hague on the MH17 crash does not present a lot of new information, however, it does leave the need to be skeptical and consider who benefits from it, David Swanson, an American journalist and activist believes.
"It's not clear to me how much more we know… Does the report rule out another plane shooting this plane down? It doesn't seem to explicitly say so. If it was a missile from the ground, the report says nothing about who shot it," Swanson told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
"The report draws no conclusion about whether the plane was brought down by a missile or by another airplane and acknowledges the inadequacy of the search on the ground because of the warring in the vicinity of the crash in Ukraine," he stressed.
"There is the need to be skeptical and consider who benefits…We need (a)full investigation," Swanson concluded.
The Dutch Safety Board released the preliminary report on the MH17 crash earlier today. According to the report, the Malaysia Airlines flight broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.
“The available images show that the pieces of wreckage were pierced in numerous places. The pattern of damage to the aircraft fuselage and the cockpit is consistent with that which may be expected from a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside,” the report reads.
“It’s likely that this damage resulted in loss of structural integrity of the aircraft, leading to an in-flight break up… There are no indications that the MH17 crash was caused by a technical fault or by actions of the crew,” the experts concluded.
The investigation was conducted according to International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations standards . The only objective of this investigation is the prevention of similar accidents and incidents, the report says.
The Board also said that the preliminary reports were sent to the other countries involved in the investigation, including Malaysia, Ukraine, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia and their reactions to the report have been received.
Earlier, Dutch Safety Board spokeswoman Sara Vernooij confirmed that the final report is due to be published by next summer.
On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk, killing all 298 people on board.
The reason for the crash is still a matter of debate. Kiev accuses independence supporters in eastern Ukraine of shooting the plane down, but cannot provide any evidence for this assertion. The local militia leaders assert that they do not have weapons capable of shooting down a plane flying at 32,000 feet.
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