Four men go on trial in the Netherlands on Monday, in the first criminal case over the murder of 298 people on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine in 2014.
The Boeing 777 went down amid a conflict in eastern Ukraine, after Russian-backed rebels seized the area.
Investigators say they have proof the Buk missile system that shot it down came from a military base in Russia.
The four suspects are unlikely to take part in the trial.
Three of the men are Russian and one is from eastern Ukraine. Neither country extradites its citizens but one of the Russians will have a defence team in the courtroom and the court says it is also prepared to accept testimony from them by video link.
Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in the deadly attack on 17 July 2014. Citizens of 10 different countries died on flight MH17.
The roar of planes is audible. Schiphol’s high security justice complex is right next door to the runway where flight MH17 took off. But no-one is expecting any of the four suspects to fly in to face justice.
This trial is the culmination of the most complex criminal investigation in Dutch history.
Two thirds of the victims were Dutch; the Netherlands took the lead in the investigation and the trial will be held within the Dutch legal system.
Two weeks have been allocated for the start, which will cover mostly procedural aspects and establish whether indeed the trials will be conducted in absentia, without the accused.
Victims’ relatives will have a chance to tell the court how their lives have been affected and what they see as the most appropriate punishment.
Piet Ploeg’s nephew came back in 80 pieces and Mr Ploeg keeps the list of body-parts in his safe. His brother Alex’s remains have never been found.
Piet Ploeg has no expectation the accused will appear even via video link, or that they’ll serve time if convicted of mass murder.
But the trial matters for him and so many other relatives, because for them it’s the only key to unlocking “the truth”.
“We want the world to know what really happened”, he told me, “and to know who did it.”
Little is known about who will testify before the court’s three judges.
Unconfirmed Dutch reports say there are 13 witnesses in the case whose identities will remain secret, but the judges may decide that anyone who has already given evidence to prosecutors may not need to appear in person.
The court will be able to hear anonymous testimony if necessary, in a trial that could take more than three years.
Who are the suspects?
Two of them are allegedly linked to Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, which has been linked to cyber-plots as well as the deadly nerve agent attack on Salisbury in England.
- Igor Girkin, also known as Strelkov. He is a former colonel in Russia’s FSB intelligence service, given the title of minister of defence in the rebel-held eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, prosecutors say
- Sergei Dubinsky, known as Khmury. He was employed by Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, according to investigators. They say he was a deputy of Mr Girkin and in regular contact with Russia
- Oleg Pulatov, known as Giurza. He is allegedly a former soldier with GRU special forces who became deputy head of the intelligence service in Donetsk
- Leonid Kharchenko, known as Krot. He is a Ukrainian national with no military background who led a combat unit as a commander in Eastern Ukraine, say prosecutors.
They are accused of murdering 298 people and causing the MH17 crash. Prosecutors say the men are jointly accountable for the attack because they “co-operated to obtain and deploy” the Buk missile launcher in order to shoot down an aircraft.
Court summonses were sent to all four although it is not certain that the men received them, so one early task for the court will be to decide whether sufficient effort was made to reach them.
#Significantly, one of the suspects, Oleg Pulatov, will be represented by a defence team, so the court may decide he is not considered in absentia. Igor Girkin has told the BBC he does not recognise the court’s authority.
In recent years, Russia’s usual reaction to being accused of anything has been denial.
MH17 is no exception.
Moscow insists it had nothing to do with the shooting down of the Boeing. And ahead of the trial in the Netherlands, Russian officials have been trying to discredit the proceedings.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told me she was “100% certain that politics is dominating” in the court case. She said that Moscow had provided Dutch investigators with “tons of materials on this case which were disregarded”.
When I asked Russian state TV talk show host Vladimir Solovyov about the trial, his reaction was: “We don’t care. We want to get the truth, but how can we when the whole investigation was far from truthful.”
As for the suspects, three of whom are Russian citizens, they had little to fear from the international arrest warrants issued last year. Russia’s constitution does not permit the extradition of its own nationals.
