By Iman Muttaqin Yusof and Nisha David
Muhammad Faizal Abdul Rahim, a brother of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 co-pilot Muhamad Firdaus, said he is embittered that a decade after Russian-backed separatists shot down the passenger jet, the families of the nearly 300 victims are still fighting for justice.
He wants the three men a Dutch court held responsible for the tragedy caught and thrown in jail for life as the sentence against them dictates, he told BenarNews just days before Wednesday’s 10th anniversary of the attack.
“Ten years have passed and the MH17 tragedy still lingers in our hearts as we continue to await justice for the victims. Our family wants those responsible for the tragedy to be punished for their actions,” Muhammad Faizal told BenarNews using an acronym for the flight.
“What frustrates us the most is that the perpetrators are still free. We hope they are found and face appropriate punishment for what they did.”
On July 17, 2014, the Boeing 777 departed from Amsterdam and was flying to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from territory in Ukraine’s Donetsk region controlled by separatist rebels, according to aDutch inquiry in 2015.
The attack killed 298 people on board, including 198 Dutch nationals, 43 Malaysians, 38 Australians, and 10 from the United Kingdom.
In 2022, a Dutch court convicted three men – Russians Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Ukrainian separatist Leonid Kharchenko – on murder charges. All three remain at large. Another man, Russian Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted.
Last year, Dutch prosecutors said there are strong indications that Russian President Vladimir Putin supplied a Buk missile system to Ukrainian separatists, the weapon that downed MH17. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the 2014 attack that occurred years before Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022,invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia did not cooperate with the investigation, and many legal requests to the Russian Federation went unanswered,” Brechtje van de Moosdijk, a spokeswoman for the Netherlands Public Prosecutor’s Office, told BenarNews in an email.
Moosdijk said there are two legal avenues being pursued by the Netherlands and Australia – one by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and another by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – that are aimed at holding Russia accountable. Still, Russia withdrew from the ICAO proceedings last month.
In Malaysia on Monday, Transport Minister Anthony Loke reaffirmed his nation’s commitment to pursuing international legal actions.
“We will continue to take legal steps, which are currently in progress,” Loke told BenarNews during a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
“Malaysia is involved alongside other nations pursuing international legal actions regarding MH17,” he said without elaborating.
Unlike the Netherlands and Australia, Loke did not explicitly name Russia, echoing his stance in 2018 when he served as transport minister during Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s administration. A year later,Mahathir backedRussia’s objections to the MH17 probe, calling the Dutch-led investigation “biased from the beginning.”
Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program Chatham House, a United Kingdom think tank, said Malaysia is walking a tightrope with the Kremlin.
“Malaysia is taking a cautious line with Putin because they don’t want to antagonize them. The international probe was clear – Russian personnel and weapons caused the tragedy,” Lutsevych told BenarNews.
Neutral
Even now, Malaysia has been neutral in most of its diplomatic relations, mainly for economic purposes, analysts said.
Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow from the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said Malaysia is better served by pursuing substantive economic interests rather than getting caught up in geopolitical issues.
“Generally, in the conduct of international affairs, pursuit of justice is often very pragmatically tempered with economic interests, more so in the case of developing countries where the scale is often tipped more in favor of the latter,” Oh told BenarNews.
“Unlike the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where there is a religious-kinship-camaraderie dimension, Malaysia does not seem to take a keen interest in the conflict in the Russian-Ukrainian issue.”
Meanwhile, Azmi Hassan, a senior fellow at the Nusantara Academy for Strategic Research, said Malaysia had felt like an “outcast” during the formation of the Joint Investigative Team (JIT), which has included authorities from Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ukraine and eventually Malaysia.
“At that time, Malaysia was seen as too close or too lenient towards Russia and its proxy. When the JIT team released the report linking the rebels in Ukraine to Russia. Mahathir, at that time, did not agree with the report even though we were part of it.
“In Malaysia’s eyes, MH17 has been used as a geopolitical tool ... and Malaysia was not satisfied,” he told BenarNews.
Global demands
Victims’ families around the globe are demanding that political leaders take a stronger stance in regard to the aircraft tragedy. Piet Ploeg, chairman of the MH17 Disaster Foundation, which represents victims’ families, said there’s a need for international pressure on Russia to cooperate.
“All information about the crew of the Buk system and other responsible persons has to come from Russia, and Russia is not cooperating at all,” Ploeg told BenarNews.
“If sanctions are helpful, [affected] countries should consider this,” said Ploeg, who lost his brother, sister-in-law and nephew in the attack.
Last week, Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus reaffirmed his nation’s commitment to the pursuit of justice for the attack victims.
“We remember the victims. Australia remembers them. The international community remembers them. Together, we will honor their memory and continue to seek justice for their loss,” Dreyfus said in a July 4 statement.
Back in Malaysia, the country has spent more than 27 million ringgit (U.S. $5.78 million) to fund the MH17 trial, Loke told Parliament in March 2023. Eight months later in November, he said compensation had been settled with the families of the 43 Malaysian victims, but the amount remains confidential between Malaysia Airlines and the families.
Darlina Kwan, the youngest sister of MH17 flight attendant Dora Shahila Kassim, said her family chose not to attend the 10th-anniversary commemoration in Amsterdam, opting instead for a quiet remembrance at home because of her mother’s health.
She called on the government to maintain financial and emotional support for the survivors.
“I just hope that our government and Malaysia Airlines will check on everyone, the next of kin of MH17, to see how we are doing and support us,” Darlina told BenarNews.