MOSCOW, October 28 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova – The details of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crash will remain unknown until the final report on the causes is released in summer 2015, Spokesperson for Dutch Safety Board (DSB) Sara Vernooij told RIA Novosti Tuesday.
“We are not going to give details on what information the Dutch Safety Board has for the investigation, because the investigation is still ongoing and until we release the final report we won’t give any information about what sources we have and where they come from,” Vernooij said answering RIA Novosti’s request to comment on recent updates in the story.
On Monday, German magazine Der Spiegel published an interview in which the chief investigator of the Dutch National Prosecutors' Office Fred Westerbeke said he did not exclude the possibility that the MH17 flight may have been shot down from the air – a scenario neglected thus far by the investigation.
Russia, on the contrary, has said before that it has radar imagery proving the fully laden Boeing 777 was shot down by a Ukrainian military aircraft flying in the vicinity. According to Westerbeke, the Dutch investigators are filing an official request for the Russian radar data.
But given the investigation is ongoing the DSB was unable to confirm the information.
“It is not us who gave an interview, but a Dutch public prosecutor, it is another duty – a criminal investigation. We investigate the cause of the crash, so it’s two separate investigations,” Vernooij explained.
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) also declined to comment on the matter until the DSB publishes the report.
“Under Annex 13 to the Chicago Convention, ICAO is awaiting submission of the MH17 Accident Investigation Final Report by the Dutch Safety Board. Should the Final Report contain comments or recommendations pertinent to ICAO’s global mission and role, we may have remarks to provide on its substance at that time – but not before,” Anthony Philbin, Communications Chief with the Office of the Secretary General at ICAO told RIA Novosti.
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.
Kiev accused independence supporters in eastern Ukraine of shooting the plane down, but has not provided any evidence for this assertion. The local militia leaders have said that they do not have weapons capable of shooting down a plane flying at 32,000 feet.
