MH17 Investigation Does Not Have Enough Evidence to Initiate New Trials: Dutch Prosecutors

HAGUE (Sputnik) - The investigation into the crash of the MH17 plane in Donbass in 2014 has failed to gather sufficient evidence to initiate new trials, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said on Wednesday.

The Hague hosts on Wednesday a press conference on new findings from the JIT regarding the 2014 downing of the MH17 plane in eastern Ukraine.

"Although a lot of new information has been discovered about various people involved, the evidence is at the moment not concrete enough to lead to new prosecutions," the JIT said in a statement.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, crashed on 17 July 2014 in eastern Ukraine amid military clashes between the Ukrainian government and local self-proclaimed republics. All 298 people on board (most of them Dutch citizens) died.

The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was established to probe the case; however, Russia was denied any access to the investigation. Russia launched its own investigation and provided the JIT with evidence, including radar data showing that the plane had been shot down by a Ukrainian Buk missile that had been stored in Ukraine since 1986 and never went back to Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

However, all of that information was ignored by the Dutch investigators, who insisted that the Buk missile had come from the Russian military.