MH17: Dutch Safety Board Investigation Raises Questions

Conclusions of Dutch Safety Board
News, Commentary and Opinion

Quemado Institute
October 13, 2015
Edited October 14, 2015

The Dutch Safety Board investigation Report on the Malaysian Boeing 777 Flight MH17 airline disaster has been released, and we are now preparing a summary based on our own research. What we find most surprising about the report is that the Dutch deny there were any Ukrainian fighter aircraft within 30 km of the Boeing at the time of the shootdown, contrary to facts established by eye witnesses and Russian military radar.

Meanwhile, a preliminary analysis presented by Quemado Insitute in July 2015 points to the deliberate shootdown of the airliner by agents of the Kiev government for military purposes. Flight MH17: Theory on the Motive for the Shootdown (July 29, 2015) Click here.

For the 20-page Dutch Safety Board Brochure Report on the Crash, click here. For the full 279-page Dutch investigation report, click here.

We post below the official press release from the Dutch Safety Board website. After that are reports from Deutsche Welle, Sputnik, and IndiaTV, followed by a brief Quemado Institute editorial and a link to a Graham Phillips commentary on the methods of the Dutch investigators.

Final report MH17
Press release

Dutch Safety Board
October 13, 2015

Buk surface-to-air missile system caused MH17 crash

The crash of flight MH17 on 17 July 2014 was caused by the detonation of a 9N314M-type warhead launched from the eastern part of Ukraine using a Buk missile system. So says the investigation report published by the Dutch Safety Board today. Moreover, it is clear that Ukraine already had sufficient reason to close the airspace over the eastern part of Ukraine as a precaution before 17 July 2014. None of the parties involved recognised the risk posed to overflying civil aircraft by the armed conflict in the eastern part of Ukraine.

In response to the crash of flight MH17 the Dutch Safety Board has conducted various investigations, which have been published in two reports. The first report is on the causes of the crash and the issue of flying over conflict areas. The second report is on the compilation of the passenger list and the process of informing the relatives of the Dutch victims. The rationale behind the investigations has been published separately.

Buk missile system

The investigation has shown that flight MH17 progressed normally up to the moment when the aeroplane was flying over the eastern part of Ukraine. At 13.20 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) a 9N314M warhead, launched by a Buk surface-to-air missile system from a 320-square-kilometre area in the eastern part of Ukraine, detonated to the left and above the cockpit. The forward section of the aircraft was penetrated by hundreds of high-energy objects coming from the warhead. As a result of the impact and the subsequent blast, the three crew members in the cockpit were killed immediately and the aeroplane broke up in the air. Wreckage from the aeroplane was distributed over various sites within an area of 50 square kilometres. All 298 occupants were killed.

The Dutch Safety Board has established the cause of the crash on the basis of several sources. For example, the weapon system used was identified on the basis of, among other things, the damage pattern on the wreckage, the fragments found in the wreckage and in the bodies of crew members, and the way in which the aircraft broke up. The findings are supported by the data on the flight recorders; the Cockpit Voice Recorder picked up a sound peak during the final milliseconds. In addition, traces of paint on a number of missile fragments found match the paint on parts of a missile recovered from the area by Dutch Safety Board. Other potential causes, such as an explosion inside the aeroplane or an air-to-air missile, have been investigated and excluded. No scenario other than a Buk surface-to-air missile can explain this combination of facts. The 320-square-kilometre area from which the missile was launched has been determined on the basis of various simulations. Additional forensic investigation will be needed to establish the exact launching location; however, such an investigation lies outside the scope of the Dutch Safety Board’s mandate.

The airspace over the eastern part of Ukraine

The airspace over the eastern part of Ukraine was much in use: between 14 and 17 July 2014, 61 operators from 32 countries routed their flights through this airspace. On the day of the crash, until the airspace was closed, 160 commercial airliners flew over the area. Malaysia Airlines prepared and operated flight MH17 in accordance with regulations. As the state of departure, the Netherlands had no responsibility to advise Malaysia Airlines (or KLM, as its code share partner) with regard to the chosen flight route.

On 17 July 2014 an armed conflict was taking place in the eastern part of Ukraine. In the preceding months, the conflict had expanded into the airspace: from late April the number of military aircraft downed increased. According to statements by the Ukrainian authorities, in two cases long-range weapons were used. In the Dutch Safety Board’s opinion, Ukraine had sufficient reason to close the entire airspace over the eastern part of Ukraine as a precaution. Instead, on military grounds flying at lower altitudes was restricted. The same turns out to apply to conflict areas elsewhere in the world: it is rare for a state to close its airspace because of an armed conflict.

Flying over conflict areas

The Dutch Safety Board has noticed that the current system of responsibilities with respect to flying over conflict areas is inadequate. Operators assume that unrestricted airspaces are safe. When assessing the risk, the operators do usually take into account the safety of departure and arrival locations, but not the safety of the countries they fly over. When flying over a conflict area, an additional risk assessment is necessary. Therefore, the Dutch Safety Board considers it extremely important that parties involved in aviation – including states, international organisations such as ICAO and IATA, and operators – exchange more information about conflict areas and potential threats to civil aviation. When processing and interpreting this information, more attention should be paid to the development of the conflict, including any increase of military activity and shootings from the ground. States involved in an armed conflict should receive more incentives and better support to safeguard the safety of their airspace. In addition, the Dutch Safety Board is of the opinion that operators should give public account for their flight routes.

Passenger information

After the crash of flight MH17 was reported, many relatives gathered at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol , hoping to obtain more information there. At the end of the evening an initial §senger list was made public. It then took two to four days before all of the surviving relatives received confirmation from the Dutch authorities. When gathering information related to the passenger list and determining the identity of the occupants and their surviving relatives, the information that various parties gathered about the victims and their relatives was not combined. The Dutch crisis organisation failed to function properly and the government authorities involved lacked direction. In order to improve information provision after a crash, the Dutch Safety Board recommends – among other things – that passengers’ nationalities be registered on passenger lists. The Dutch Safety Board also recommends that the Dutch government make provisions to improve direction in case of a disaster abroad with a large number of Dutch victims.

Reconstruction

Over the past months, a reconstruction of the forward part of the aeroplane was assembled at the Dutch air base of Gilze-Rijen. The reconstruction clearly shows the effects of the impact and subsequent blast, and has been important for verification and additional substantiation of the investigation’s results.

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A report from Deutsche Welle:

MH17 Crash: Russian and Dutch Reports Reach
Contradictory Conclusions

Deutsche Welle (msn.com)
October 13, 2015

Dutch daily “De Volkskrant” quoted three sources close to the investigation on Tuesday, saying that the 15-month Dutch-led inquiry had found that the plane was hit by a BUK surface-to-air missile. The Malaysian airliner crashed en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board, most of whom were Dutch citizens. The aircraft was flying over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine at the time of the incident. Two sources told the “Volkskrant” on Tuesday that “the BUK missile is developed and made in Russia.”

“It can be assumed that the rebels would not be able to operate such a device. I suspect the involvement of former Russian military officials,” one told the paper. The Dutch Safety Board, which led the international team of investigators, stressed, however, that while they could conclude that flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made missile, its commission would not determine who pulled the trigger. A separate probe into who launched the missile is underway by Dutch prosecutors. The final report by international invetigators was due to be officially released later on Tuesday.

Contradicting reports

A Russian state-controlled BUK missile-maker said, however, that its own investigation contradicted the conclusions from the Dutch probe. Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, the head of the Russian Almaz-Antey concern, Yan Novikov , said the Russian report shows that if flight MH17 was hit by a BUK missile, it was fired from the village of Zaroshenske, which Russia says was under Ukrainian government control at the time. The chief of the missile manufacturer also said that according to the results of an experiment held in July, the model of missile used could also have been much older than previously thought. That information was presented to the Dutch investigators, but was not taken into account, Novikov claimed. Ukraine and Western countries continue to argue that the missile was fired by Russian troops or Russian-backed separatists.

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From Sputnik News:

Search for Truth: What Happens When
Missile Hits Airliner Cockpit (VIDEO)

Sputnik
October 13, 2015

In an Almaz-Antey pursuit of uncovering the truth about the fate of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, they explode a Buk missile next to an airplane cockpit and film what happens. The technical experts of Almaz-Antey are hard at work trying to determine what exactly happened to the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. During this simulation test, a Buk missile is being detonated next to a pilot’s cockpit. [Video of Buk explosion at source.]

Quemado Institute comments: As the video shows, damage from a BUK missile looks a lot different from the numerous clean holes found on the actual cockpit wreckage. When we are able study the full Dutch Safety Board report, it will be interesting to learn what material evidence, if any, the Dutch investigators based their conclusions on. Quemado Insitute believes the Malaysian Boeing was hit by heavy fire from a Ukrainian fighter jet, based on statements of the OSCE observer who, arriving at the scene immediately after the crash, examined fragments of the cockpit, as well as many witnesses who observed one or more fighter jets flying nearby. Was the OSCE official’s testimony included in the Dutch Safety Board investigation?

Two additional reports from Sputnik News:

Russian Almaz-Antey Delivers MH17 Report (VIDEO)

Sputnik
October 15, 2015

Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey presents the results of its own report into the missile launch that downed the MH17 Malaysian Airlines plane over eastern Ukraine. The investigation results confirm that MH17 was taken down from an area under control of the Ukrainian forces. “Today we can say for sure that if the Boeing was downed with a Buk missile, then it was with a 9M38 from the populated area of Zaroschenskoye,” Mikhail Malyshevsky, adviser to head engineer of the Buk missile system producer Almaz-Antey, said Tuesday during a briefing in Moscow. The last missile of this type was produced in the Soviet Union in 1986 and Russia decommissionned its remaining 9M38s in 2011, as the expiration period of this missile is 25 years, including all possible prolongations.

Almaz-Antey used Il-86 airliners and a 9M38M1 missile in its experiment into the MH17 downing, Almaz-Amtey CEO Yan Novikov said. “The concern made the decision to conduct a second full-fledged actual experiment. Since there were no decommissioned Boeing-777s, an Il-86 was used in the experiment, whose fuselage is similar to the parameters of the Boeing-777. The experiment was held on October 7 and a 9M38M1 missile was used,” he told journalists. Almaz-Antey’s investigation into the MH17 crash over eastern Ukraine last year “completely contradicts” the results of the Dutch commission in regard to the type of missile used to down the aircraft, Novikov said. “The results of the experiment completely contradict the results of the Dutch commission on the type of missile and the location of its launch,” he told journalists. “The huge volume of accumulated data, and here we only have a very small amount, we are ready to hand over to both an international committee on the investigation of the catastrophe or to a European court that will review our case,” Novikov added.

The report is presented Tuesday in Moscow by Almaz-Antey CEO Yan Novikov and adviser to head engineer Mikhail Malyshevsky. The same day the Dutch Safety Board is expected to issue the results of its investigation into the incident. [Videos available at source.]

Search for Culprits Behind MH17 Crash to Require
Time, Patience – Dutch PM

Sputnik
October 13, 2015

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that search for those responsible for last year’s crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in East Ukraine will require time and patience. GILZE-RIJEN (Sputnik) – The search for those responsible for last year’s crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in East Ukraine will require time and patience, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Tuesday. “We need to understand that this process will need time and patience,” Rutte told reporters following the presentation of the Dutch Safety Board’s final report on the crash. “It is necessary now that the perpetrators are found and brought to justice. All countries need to contribute to finding those responsible,” he added.

Quemado Institute comments: What good will a “search for those responsible” do if the search is based on false conclusions about how the airliner was downed? We question whether the Dutch had the right to conduct an official worldwide investigation in the first place, as Western pressure would render them incapable of finding the Ukrainians guilty. We advocated from the start that the responsibility for the investigation should rest with Malaysia.

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A report from IndiaTV:

Russian Buk missile downed MH17 in Ukraine:
Dutch probe report

IndiaTV
October 13, 2015

The Hague, Netherlands: Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was destroyed by a Buk surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine, the Dutch Safety Board said Tuesday as it presented the results of an official probe into the crash. The missile’s Russian maker, however, presented its own report hours earlier, trying to clear Russia-backed separatists who controlled the area or Russia of any involvement in the crash on July 17, 2014, that killed all 298 people aboard the plane. The Dutch investigators said the missile exploded less than a meter (yard) from the MH17 cockpit, killing three crew in the cockpit and breaking off the front of the plane. The aircraft broke up in the air and crashed over a large area controlled by rebel separatists who had been fighting government troops there since April 2014.

The board said the plane should never have been flying there as Ukraine should have closed its airspace to civil aviation, adding that nobody gave a thought to the dangers to passenger planes. The investigators unveiled a ghostly reconstruction of the forward section of MH17. Some of the nose, cockpit and business class of the Boeing 777 were rebuilt from fragments of the aircraft recovered from the crash scene and flown to Gilze-Rijen air base in southern Netherlands. Ukraine and Western countries contend the airliner was downed by a missile fired by Russia-backed rebels or Russian forces, from rebel-controlled territory.

However, the Russian state-controlled Almaz-Antey arms-maker contended on Tuesday a draft of the Dutch report found the plane was shot down by a Buk missile warhead. However, Almaz-Antey says it conducted two experiments — in one of which a Buk missile was detonated near the nose of an airplane similar to a 777 — that contradict that conclusion. The experimental aircraft’s remains showed a much different submunitions damage pattern than seen on the remnants of MH17, the company said in a statement.

The experiments also refute what it said was the Dutch version, that the missile was fired from Snizhne, a village that was under rebel control. An Associated Press reporter saw a Buk missile system in that vicinity on the same day. “We have proven with our experiments that the theory about the missile flying from Snizhne is false,” Almaz-Antey’s director general Yan Novikov told a news conference at a sprawling high-tech convention center in Moscow. Almaz-Antey in June had said that a preliminary investigation suggested that the plane was downed by a model of Buk that is no longer in service with the Russian military but that was part of the Ukrainian military arsenal.

Information from the first experiment, in which a missile was fired at aluminum sheets mimicking an airliner’s fuselage, was presented to the Dutch investigators, but was not taken into account, Almaz-Antey chief Novikov said. Novikov said evidence shows that if the plane was hit by a Buk, it was fired from the village of Zaroshenske, which Russia says was under Ukrainian government control at the time.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press that the draft report said the plane was destroyed by a Buk surface-to-air missile fired from the village of Snizhne; the official who was not authorized to comment publicly, spoke on condition of anonymity. Many reports, including an investigation by the open-source group Bellingcat, also suggest the plane was downed by a missile fired from near Snizhne.

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A further report from IndiaTV:

Russian Missile-Maker Contradicts
Dutch MH17 Crash report

IndiaTV
Updated October 13, 2015

Moscow: A Russian state-controlled missile-maker said Tuesday its investigation of last year’s crash of a Malaysia Airlines plane over rebel eastern Ukraine contradicts conclusions from a Dutch probe. Ukraine and Western countries contend the airliner was downed by a missile fired by Russia-backed rebels or Russian forces from rebel-controlled territory on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people aboard.

The Dutch investigation into the crash of flight MH17 is to be made public later Tuesday, but a draft report was presented to Russia and other governments in July. A statement from the Almaz-Antey arms-maker said the Dutch draft found that the plane, a Boeing 777 belonging to Malaysia Airlines, was shot down by a Buk missile warhead that uses submunitions shaped like a capital letter I. However, Almaz-Antey says it conducted two experiments — in one of which a Buk missile was detonated near the nose of an airplane similar to a 777 — that contradict that conclusion.

The experimental aircraft’s remains showed a much different submunitions damage pattern than seen on the remnants of MH17, the company said in a statement. The experiments also refute what it said was the Dutch version, that the missile was fired from Snizhne, a village that was under rebel control. An Associated Press reporter saw a Buk missile system in that vicinity on the same day. Almaz-Antey in June had said that a preliminary investigation suggested that the plane was downed by a model of Buk that is no longer in service with the Russian military but that was part of the Ukrainian military arsenal.

Information from the first experiment, in which a missile was fired at aluminum sheets mimicking an airliner’s fuselage, was presented to the Dutch investigators, but was not taken into account, Almaz-Antey chief Yan Novikov said at a news conference. Novikov said evidence shows that if the plane was hit by a Buk, it was fired from the village of Zaroshenske, which Russia says was under Ukrainian government control at the time.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press that the draft report said the plane was destroyed by a Buk surface-to-air missile fired from the village of Snizhne; the official who was not authorized to comment publicly, spoke on condition of anonymity. Many reports, including an investigation by the open-source group Bellingcat, also suggest the plane was downed by a missile fired from near Snizhne.

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Quemado Insitute Commentary: Is the Dutch Report Honest?
by Kennedy Applebaum

Quemado Institute
October 13, 2015

The Dutch Safety Board official Brochure version of the Crash report (click here) includes a section called Excluded Causes. We quote this in full: “In addition to investigating the causes of the crash, the investigation also focused on excluding alternative scenarios. The investigation has demonstrated that the crash was not caused by metal fatigue, corrosion or existing damage to the aeroplane. Neither was the crash caused by an exploding fuel tank, explosives exploding inside the aeroplane, or a fire on board the aeroplane. Events such as a lightning strike or a meteor impact were also excluded.”

Later on in the report, a paragraph states: “It was also examined whether there had been an aerial attack by a military aircraft. An attack from the air could not have caused the crash given the high energy objects found, the damage to the aircraft and the trajectory followed by the high energy objects. Moreover, analysis of the available material has revealed that no military aircraft were present within at least a radius of 30 kilometres of the aeroplane.”

Giving this statement the benefit of the doubt, it does seem possible that heavy fire from a military aircraft was not sufficient to create the “high energy objects” found. Some analysts have proposed that both a surface-to-air missile and heavy machine gun fire or air-to-air missiles from a fighter jet caused the breakup of the plane. The Dutch report, however, seems vague about what is meant by “high energy objects found” (found where?) and the “trajectory followed by the high energy objects” (which trajectory was that?)

Michael Bociurkiw, an OSCE observer who happened to arrive at the site immediately after the crash on July 17, 2014 analysed the “trajectories” of “high energy objects” in a fragment of the cockpit he found on the ground. He concluded that they were caused by heavy cannon fire from slightly below but not underneath the Boeing, indicating the projectiles were fired from the air. The shapes of the holes in the cockpit wall sections he examined showed entry and exit trajectories, and suggest that the pilot himself was targeted. Photos of the cockpit fragment show a concentration of holes right at the pilot’s position, whereas the explosion of a BUK missile would have caused scattered damaged unlikely to be localized at that spot.

In other words, what the OSCE observer saw with his own eyes, and of which there is a detailed photographic record, may have been ignored by Dutch investigators.

So far, while the Dutch official report raises a lot of questions, we would not be able to conclusively argue it is false. However, the last statement quoted above — that there were no military aircraft within 30 km — seems to be a clear fabrication. Many local Donbass people witnessed at least one, or possibly two, additional aircraft near the Boeing just before the crash, a fact confirmed by Russian radar. The Dutch investigators spoke briefly with local residents in August 2015, but those questioned later reported that the Dutch were not interested in what they had to say.

Russel Bentley confirms these facts: “The photographs of the fuselage of MH17’s cockpit are all you really need to see. The perfectly round 30 mm holes can be seen in photos on Google Images (click here). Or listen to what Canadian citizen and OSCE monitor Michael Bociurkiw said, just a few days after the event. Russian military radar detected at least one SU-25 in close proximity to MH17 just before the crash, consistent with eyewitness accounts from people on the ground at the time, including DPR Prime Minister Alexander Zaharshenko (6:14). Interestingly, the Wikipedia and other information sources about SU-25 flight capabilities were edited and changed before July 17th, to reduce the flight ceiling from 10,000 meters to 7,000 meters. The SU-25 CAN fly at 10,000 meters, (10:50) the height that MH17 was at when it was attacked. The SU-25 is armed with two 30 mm cannons. The Ukrainian Air Force has Su-25’s. The DPR does not.” Later Bentley adds, “What ever happened to the air traffic control tapes from Kiev ATC, or the air traffic controller Carlos from Spain who tweeted about Ukrainian SBU agents confiscating the tapes minutes after MH17 went down?” For an unedited translation of the tweets from Air Traffic Controller Carlos (@Spainbuca) click here. For full Russel Bentley commentary at Fort Russ, click here.

Additional References:

For more about the indifference of the Dutch investigators to local evidence, see Graham Phillips August 2015 on-the-site report: The MH17 Investigation and The Parts They Just Don’t Care About. Click here.

Quemado Institute considered the possibility that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had military motives for shooting down the Malaysian airliner.  See Flight MH17: Theory on the Motive for the Shootdown. Click here.

Journalists’ Complicity in Hiding Those Guilty for MH17 Malaysian Airline Crash, by Eric Zeusse, Global Research, July 11, 2015. Click here.

Who is Obstructing the MH17 Investigation? by Vladimir Platov, New Eastern Outlook, August 14, 2015. Click here.