JUST over a year ago on July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot out of the sky over East Ukraine, a war zone held by Russian-backed separatists. All 298 passengers on board, comprising mostly Dutch nationals, were killed. However, the investigation into the incident by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) headed by the Dutch, in which Malaysia is a member, has yet to be definitively concluded. Instead a preliminary report produced a few months after the tragedy did little to identify the perpetrator other than to say that the aeroplane, a wide-bodied Boeing-777, was indeed shot down. Most unfortunately, the geopolitics of the Ukraine civil war quickly politicised the incident. What would logically be assumed an accident irrespective of who shot it down ” because neither Kiev nor the rebels would have benefited from bringing down a commercial flight ” got entangled in the immediate accusation by the United States that the party responsible was the rebels armed by Russia. However, no hard evidence was presented to justify the accusations.
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