WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On July 17, 2014, Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down by a missile in eastern Ukraine while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft died in the incident.
"The United States will continue to support the efforts of the Joint Investigation Team and urges other states to cooperate fully in order to ensure those responsible are brought to justice," Nauert stated. "As we and the Joint Investigation Team have said, Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine fired the surface-to-air BUK missile — brought into sovereign Ukrainian territory from Russia — that took down flight MH17."
Earlier in July, Amsterdam said the trial in the case of the MH17 crash would be held in the Netherlands. Ukraine and the Netherlands are planning on July 7 to sign an agreement on international legal cooperation that will entitle the Dutch side to hold trial, according to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) tasked with probing the crash announced in September that the MH17 airliner was allegedly downed by a Buk missile system, which was brought from Russia and after the crash returned there. However, Russia's Almaz-Antey concern rejected findings in the probe, saying that three simulations showed that the missile was launched from the Zaroshchens'ke area, controlled by Ukraine's army at the time of the downing.
