"All the wreckage found at the crash site underwent a forensic medical examination. The Russian defence concern Almaz-Antey assessed photographs of the wreckage found at the site of the tragedy. Their conclusions on the photos and reports were attached to the case," Ridderbeks said.
According to the report, only the wreckage of the MH17 aircraft was found at the site.
The Dutch prosecutor's office is ready to take into account new data on the ongoing investigation into the 2014 downing of a Malaysian jet over Ukraine, Ridderbeks added.
The hearing on the merits of the case resumed earlier in the day in the Schiphol Judicial Complex.
Ridderbeks said that the probe by the investigating judge was still ongoing and recalled that back in 2020 prosecutors said they were always open to new information that could result in changes to the interim conclusion of the investigation.
The Malaysian Boeing bound for Kuala Lumpur crashed in July 2014 while flying over a conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard. A Joint Investigation Team, set up by Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine claims that the plane was downed by a Buk missile belonging to the Russian armed forces. Moscow has repeatedly rejected the allegations. Though Russia offered help in the investigation, it was denied full access to the probe.
Almaz-Antey, the Russian maker of advanced anti-aircraft systems, whose products include the Buk type air defence missile, carried out its own investigation into the MH17 crash, examining forensic evidence, declassifying secret information about its military hardware, and conducting a complex experiment based on ballistics, flight trajectory and other pertinent information. The Russian investigators concluded that an older variant of the Buk missile which was built in 1986 and had been phased out of Russia's arsenal during a military modernisation campaign in the early 2010s had been used to target and destroy the plane.
The MH17 court is trying Russians Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky, and Oleg Pulatov, as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, for their actions, which, according to Joint Investigative Team (JIT), led to the downing of the Boeing. Out of the four defendants, only Pulatov is represented by lawyers in the court.
