2014 downing of MH17: Dutch court sentences 3 to life in prison

BADHOEVEDORP, (Netherlands): A Dutch court on Thursday sentenced three men to life imprisonment over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, in the early stages of a war that eight years later would put the world on edge.

Russians Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko were found guilty in absentia of murdering all 298 people on board and of bringing down the Boeing 777 with a Russian-supplied missile. A fourth man was acquitted.

Moscow slammed the “scandalous” verdict as politically motivated, while Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky praised it as “important”.