OREANDA-NEWS. The verdict in the case of the destruction of the Malaysian Boeing operating flight MH17 in the sky over the Donbass in 2014 may be announced at the end of 2022. On Monday, September 6, at a court hearing in a complex on the territory of Amsterdam airport Schiphol, the presiding judge Hendrik Steinhuis presented the agenda of the upcoming hearings, three possible dates are reserved for the announcement of the verdict: September 22, November 17 and December 15 next year.

Meanwhile, the relatives of the victims have begun speaking in court, three weeks have been reserved for this. More than 90 people can speak at the meetings, some of them by video link from other countries. Steinhuis pointed out that the right of relatives to speak at court sessions has existed in the Netherlands since 2005, they are heard without asking questions. Their statements help to assess the consequences of the events that are the subject of the trial, and are taken into account when passing sentence, the judge noted.

He also expressed confidence that the speeches of the relatives of the victims of the MH17 disaster will be «extremely emotional», since people have lost relatives, and this happened as a result of the crash of the plane that was shot down. According to Steinhuis, their grief is growing, because the reason why the plane was shot down has not yet been clarified, and it has not been established who gave the corresponding order. In addition, from March 7, 2022, speeches of lawyers will be heard for four weeks.

The plane «Boeing-777» of Malaysia Airlines operating flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down in the sky over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. As a result of this disaster, all 298 people on board were killed.

In 2019, after analyzing all the collected evidence, including numerous examinations, the study of the wreckage of the aircraft, the examination of the bodies of the dead and other data, the international investigative group JIT concluded that the airliner was shot down by a missile brought from Russia of the «Buk» air defense system from the territory controlled by the separatists, near the village of Pervomaisky in the Donetsk region. Moscow completely denies involvement in the incident and puts forward a number of alternative versions of the causes of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing.