KUALA LUMPUR, July 19 (Bernama) -- No retreat, no surrender!
This is the impassioned plea of Ukrainian Ambassador to Malaysia, Olexander Nechytaylo to the international community to continue pursuing the perpetrators behind the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, using every possible legal and diplomatic avenues.
If necessary, the envoy said, international sanctions should also be considered as an option to ensure that justice prevailed for the victims and their families.
"I believe the investigation team has all the evidence to prosecute those (culprits) involved. It's just a matter of time until they are indicted and eventually, prosecuted in (a) court (of law).
"The legal processes should be there, even if the individuals in question cannot be extradited to the international prosecution team, we need to have the processes in place," he told Bernama in an interview here Wednesday.
Citing the success of prosecuting Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic for their part in the Srebrenica massacre, Nechytaylo wants no party to lose hope.
In 2017, Mladic and Karadzic were both sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), more than 20 years after the Bosnian 1992-95 war ended.
The ICTY was a United Nations court of law that dealt with war crimes that took place during conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, the ambassador said Ukraine was happy with the cooperation they received from other Joint Investigation Team (JIT) members like Malaysia, Australia, Belgium and Australia to ensure "justice and closure for (affected) families."
Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of MH17 where 298 passengers and crew onboard Flight MH17 perished when the jetliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
In a statement published on its website on May 24, JIT said the team was convinced that a BUK TELAR missile was used to down MH17, and that it originated from the 53rd Anti Aircraft Missile Brigade (53rd Brigade), a unit of the Russian Army in Kursk in the Russian Federation.
Russia's Defence Ministry has rejected all the allegations.
Посилання: http://www.bernama.com/en/general/news.php?id=1481705; http://www.malaysiandigest.com/news/748474-continue-pursuing-perpetrators-behind-downing-of-mh17-ukrainian-envoy.html