The Dutch Parliament fears that those responsible for shooting down Malaysian Airlines MH17, an attack that killed 298 over the skies of war-torn eastern Ukraine, will be granted amnesty under the Minsk II peace agreement reached on Feb. 12.
One of the agreed points in the reached Minsk deal is to pardon those who may have committed a war crime in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. This particular point has caused political outrage in the Netherlands, which is leading the criminal investigation of the MH17 crash. It is feared that those responsible for downing MH17 could never be held legally liable.
The opposition of the Dutch Parliament has called for an emergency parliamentary session with Foreign Minister Bert Koenders.
“We urgently need to know what exactly is meant with the pardon and amnesty clause, as Ukraine is involved in both the Minsk agreement and the joint investigation team that investigates the tragic MH17 crash on July 17,” said opposition member Pieter Omtzigt.
The investigation is still ongoing into who shot down the passenger plane, but the evidence points to a strike by Kremlin-backed separatists, who bragged about the attack shortly after it happened.
Meanwhile, relatives of the MH17 victims have sent an urgent letter to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, expressing their concerns about the current developments in Ukraine. ‘It doesn’t need any explanation that the relatives of the 298 killed people on MH17 demand that those who are responsible for the horrible attack should be tracked down, prosecuted, and punished’, said the letter.
As the details of the new Minsk agreement were released, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was in Brussels at the European Union summit. He told reporters that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has personally assured Rutte that if those responsible are found, that they would not fall under the amnesty clause of the Minsk deal.
Members of the Dutch Parliament, however, are not so satisfied with the statement Poroshenko has given to Rutte. Some 193 of the victims are from the Netherlands.
“It is totally unacceptable to include an amnesty clause in the Minsk agreement without informing the Netherlands which is leading the criminal investigation that will possibly lead to pro-Russian rebels. Ukraine has not legally obliged itself to exclude those responsible for the MH17 crash,” coalition member Michiel Servaas said.
“Ukraine is a party in the joint MH17 investigation as well as in the Minsk agreement. The Dutch government will closely work together with Ukraine in the criminal investigation. If the responsible are found, I find it very unlikely that Ukraine would pardon them’, Foreign Minister Bert Koenders told the Dutch Parliament.
There have been many signs that MH17 was downed by a ground-to-air missile launcher known as a BUK. Many argue that the BUK must have crossed the border from Russia and been used by Kremlin-backed separatists trained by Russian forces to use the sophisticated weapon that can blow a plane out of the sky from a distance of 10,000 meters.
The Dutch parliament, however, hopes that those who shot down MH17 will never be pardoned by the Ukrainian government.
Stefan Huijboom is a freelance Dutch journalist in Ukraine.
