Int’l MH17 crash investigation ‘politically deficient, defective by process’
The Dutch-led investigation into the MH17 crash was politically motivated; its goal was to determine why Russia was responsible instead of finding out who actually downed the plane, says Joaquin Flores, an Editor-in-Chief at Fort Russ news.
The Dutch-led criminal investigation into the ill-fated flight MH17 has concluded the missile which downed the passenger jet came from a rebel-held area in eastern Ukraine. According to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) a Buk missile system was brought from Russia.
The JIT consists of investigators and experts from the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Malaysia and Ukraine.
RT: What do you make of the investigation results? Are you surprised?
Joaquin Flores: We are not at all surprised by the results. The very problem with the JIT from its genesis was that it was put together by NATO as a result of a failure to actually create a truly independent inquiry team which was rejected at the level of the UN Security Council, once it became clear the point of any investigation was going to be to determine how it was that the Russian Federation was responsible instead of looking at the first question, ‘who did it?’ So, that was the problem from the very start. It was a geopolitically motivated investigation and it was flawed. Of course, you have a conflict of interest here, right at the start because the Netherlands is a NATO country. And NATO has been actively involved in this conflict on the side of the Ukrainian government. So, we are not at all surprised by the results and it is politically deficient, and by process it is also defective.
RT: This is meant to be an independent report, isn’t it? And surely, you would hope that politics stayed out of the report. Do you think this is the case?
JF: It can’t be the case. We know that what happened was there was an original proposal to create a truly independent inquiry into this. And once it became clear that it was going to be politicized and had the intention of predetermining guilt of the Russian Federation which is not a party to the conflict - this was a critical flaw. And the real victims here are the families of the deceased in this tragedy…
‘Such an approach is not scientific’
Dutch journalist Joost Niemoller, the author of ‘MH-17: The Cover-up Deal’ said the investigation has not been objective and he sees many problems with the way it was carried out.
“My main criticism is that the investigation was organized by the Dutch in very close collaboration with the Ukrainian government. When you do objective research, you would say that it is possible the Ukrainians did it. And now that is not possible anymore because the Ukrainians are researching themselves,” he told RT.
“What you see here is that the main evidence presented is the tapes with all those conversations …And when I asked what the source of these tapes is, they answered that it is Ukrainian Secret Service. And when I asked are there other sources, they said “no”. I don’t believe that you could take it seriously,” said Niemoller.
Speaking about the conclusions of the investigation, which suggests Russians are responsible, he said the problem since the very beginning was that investigators thought they knew what happened and “now they are looking for evidence” for that.
“This is not a scientific way of working. You have to check out all possible scenarios and you have to keep those scenarios on the table all the time,” he told RT.
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