BADHOEVEDORP - Bereaved family members listened silently with bowed heads as the names of all 298 victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 were read out on Monday at the start of the trial of four men accused of downing the plane.
Planes taking off from Schiphol roared overhead during the hearing, taking the same route as MH17 did on its way to Kuala Lumpur before it was ripped apart by a surface-to-air missile over part of Ukraine held by pro-Moscow rebels. "This is the first day that we will know what happened, who was responsible, why the plane was shot down, and to questions like what was Russia's role."Dutch prosecutors last year charged Russian nationals Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko with murder and causing the flight to crash.
"We have a duty to honour the truth, not just out of duty to the families, but also to do justice to international law," Ward Ferdinandusse, another prosecutor, told the court. "We assume they have waived their right to be present since they do not value the right to be present," Steenhuis said."He says he has nothing to do with the destruction of flight MH17," his defence lawyer Sabine ten Doesschate told the court.Russia has long denied any involvement in the downing of MH17, and has offered a series of alternative explanations for the plane's downing.
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