by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:

It’s as much a show-trial as the UK’s trial of Assange. In both cases, U.S. is behind it.

The Dutch Government began on March 9th a show-trial which will present evidence that a Russian-made Buk missile on 17 July 2014 brought down the Malaysian airliner MH17 which had 196 Dutch passengers, all of whom were killed. The trial will exclude a great deal of evidence, such as that on 7 August 2014, just weeks after the MH17 downing, a secret agreement was drawn up between four U.S. allies to serve together as constituting an official “Joint Investigation Team” about the event, and the terms of that agreement have not been made public even to the present day. As I reported back on 24 August 2014, a secret agreement had been signed on August 8th between Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, and Australia, that Ukraine would have veto-power over any finding that their official “Joint Investigation Team” (“JIT”) would issue regarding the shoot-down of the MH17. Malaysia was excluded from the Team, but was finally admitted, after agreeing to their secret terms — including not to blame Ukraine. 

Russia’s RT headlined on 20 November 2014 “Dutch government refuses to reveal ‘secret deal’ into MH17 crash probe” and revealed that the Dutch Government was refusing to comply with its own Freedom of Information law by keeping this agreement secret. On 14 June 2016, the website “What Happened to Flight MH17” headlined “The vague role of Malaysia in the Joint Investigation Team” and reported that the JIT had actually been officially formed on 7 August 2014, and noted that, “In the limited number of public communications by JIT it is not mentioned what the role of Malaysia is in the criminal investigation.” (Malaysia, unlike those other four nations, isn’t a member of America’s core anti-Russia alliance, which includes NATO and Australia, but is instead a neutral nation and therefore considered untrustworthy by the others.)

Since when does the prime suspect in a murder, here a mass-murder, that suspect being Ukraine itself, get a seat on the jury to judge the prosecution’s case against another — and far less likely — suspect: in this case, Russia?

As I reported on 31 December 2018:

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The last announcement from the official investigation, the Netherlands-headed “Joint Investigative Team” (JIT), was on 24 May 2018, and it headlined “Update in criminal investigation MH17 disaster”. It said:

The JIT is convinced that the BUK-TELAR [missile and launcher] that was used to down MH17, originates from the 53rd Anti Aircraft Missile brigade (hereinafter 53rd brigade), a unit of the Russian army from Kursk in the Russian Federation. … This fingerprint has been compared with numerous images of BUK-TELARS, both Ukrainian and Russian ones. The only BUK-TELAR on which this combination of characteristics also was found, is a BUK-TELAR that was recorded several times when it joined a convoy of the 53rd brigade on 23 – 25 June 2014.

Consequently, the JIT presumes that within the 53rd brigade and within the circle around it, people have knowledge about the operation in which that particular BUK-TELAR was deployed. … Already in September 2016, the JIT disclosed that MH17 was downed with a BUK missile of the 9M38 series. …

The missile engine’s casing shows the number 9 д 1318869032. …

Four months later, on 17 September 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defense youtubed its response, which is titled “Briefing on newly discovered evidence pertaining to the crash of the MH17 flight”. It presented the actual history of the Buk missile and launcher which Ukraine and the other Governments on the JIT said had brought down the MH17. (The JIT includes four countries, Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, and Australia, with a fifth, Malaysia, having been brought in only later, after it finally agreed to allow Ukraine a veto over any conclusions that the team will publish. Malaysia’s participation started on 4 December 2014; but whether Malaysia has actually been allowed to play a role in the ‘investigation’ isn’t clear.) Russia’s Government documented there that four serial numbers which were printed onto the missile-fragments that the U.S.-allied team had presented to the public on May 24th —  8868720, 1318869032, 886847379 and 9M38 — were all from a Buk missile that, though manufactured in Russia, had been transferred to Ukraine in 1986, and was never thereafter in Russia nor in the possession of the Russian Government. It stayed in Ukraine. As you can see there by clicking on each, and especially onto the “Briefing” itself, this missile and its launcher had always, and constantly since their transfer to Ukraine in 1986, remained in Ukraine, and never again were located in Russia. So: if the JIT’s supplied evidence is authentic — which the Ukrainian team asserts it to be — then it outright convicts Ukraine. This is an evidentiary checkmate, against the Ukrainian side.

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And yet still the Dutch Government ignores the detailed documentary evidence from Russia regarding the service-history and ownership of that missile starting with the time of its manufacture and extending up to the present, which show that since 1986 it was owned by the Ukrainian Air Force.

They have to ignore it, because their ‘case’ is built upon those missile fragments. (However, they’ve never yet put forth any reason to believe that those fragments come from a missile or launcher that was actually involved with bringing down the MH17.) If those fragments are from equipment that since 1986 has been in Ukraine’s military, then the Dutch Government’s ‘case’ is entirely fake.

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