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The murder trial of four individuals from Russia and Ukraine accused of helping to shoot down a plane headed to Malaysia in 2014 continued Monday, with prosecutors beginning to explain their evidence.
Oleg Pulatov, Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, of Russia, and Leonid Kharchenko, of Ukraine, have been charged with involvement in downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
Investigators concluded the plane, which had been headed to Kuala Lumpur, was destroyed using a Buk missile brought from a Russian military base into Ukraine. The crash killed all 298 people aboard the plane.
Prosecutors are set to make their case for the next three days at a top-security courtroom near the Netherlands' Schiphol Airport, where the ill-fated flight departed. On Wednesday, they will reveal what punishment they want to bring against the suspects.
None of the four suspects were present at Monday's hearing and only Pulatov had Dutch lawyers to represent him. After Wednesday, the hearing will be suspended until March, when Pulatov's attorneys will make their case in front of the court. A verdict is not expected until the end of 2022.
"Today we are here to do right by the 298 victims of flight MH17," public prosecutor Thijs Berger said at court, adding that "determining the truth in this case may also contribute to averting new violence in the future."
"After all, a world that makes no effort to ascertain the truth and to punish the guilty when hundreds of innocent civilians are murdered is leaving its civilians as fair game," Berger said. "And for that reason, truth and lies need to be distinguished and perpetrators need to be punished. That is our task in this courtroom."
Monday's hearing began against a backdrop of soaring tensions between Moscow and the West over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine that has drawn fears of an invasion. Moscow has denied plans to attack its neighbor but demanded the West provide a set of legal guarantees precluding the expansion of NATO to Ukraine and other Russian neighbors and the deployment of the alliance's weapons there, a demand NATO has rejected.
Piet Ploeg, who lost his brother, sister-in-law, and nephew when MH17 was downed, was at the court for the hearing.
"We get to hear the conclusions of the prosecution, and on Wednesday we will hear the sentencing demands of the prosecution. So this ... for us, it's very important," he said.
The trial began in March last year with the solemn reading of the names of all the people who died when the plane shattered in midair and plunged to the ground in agricultural fields in conflict-torn eastern Ukraine.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
