Australia Wants 50 of their Police Officers to Guard Remains jet Fl.17
Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia said Thursday that his country, which lost citizens when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was brought down last week, has sent 50 police officers to Europe in hopes that they would be allowed to help secure the crash site in eastern Ukraine.
“It is vital that the search and the investigation not be contaminated by people who have a vested interest in the outcome,” Mr. Abbott said at a news conference in Canberra, the Australian capital.
Australia says 28 citizens and nine permanent residents were aboard the plane when it crashed in territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels on July 17, killing all 298 people onboard. For days, bodies were strewn across the site, and there have been accusations that evidence was tampered with. Western officials have said that a Russian-made antiaircraft missile supplied to the rebels brought down the jetliner. The rebels have strongly denied involvement, as has Russia.
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Under a deal reached this week between the Malaysian government and the rebels, the bodies of many of the crash victims have been transported from Ukraine to the Netherlands, and the rebels have handed over the plane’s so-called black boxes, the flight recorders. But Mr. Abbott noted Thursday that the site, while more accessible than it had been, was still under rebel control.
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Victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
“Nothing is happening without the approval of the armed rebels who most likely brought the plane down in the first place,” he said. “There has still not been anything like a thorough professional search of the area where the plane came down. And there can’t be while the site is controlled by armed men with a vested interest in the outcome of any investigation.”
Mr. Abbott said the Australian police officers had been sent to London, although it was not clear from his statement whether they had yet arrived. He said he hoped that they would be sent on to Ukraine to join an international force, under United Nations authority, to secure the site.
He said Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, would travel to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, later Thursday, along with her Dutch counterpart, Frans Timmermans, to seek a memorandum of understanding with Ukraine authorizing an international force to secure the crash site. Flight 17, which was headed to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, from Amsterdam, had 189 Dutch citizen onboard.
Mr. Abbott said he had spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro O. Poroshenko, before sending the police officers. He would not discuss the details of his conversation with Mr. Putin, nor say whether the Australian or international police contingent would be armed.
Mr. Abbott ruled out negotiating with the pro-Russian rebels as Malaysia has, saying that “we recognize the authority of the Ukraine government over the Ukrainian territory,” as well as the authority of the United Nations.
Representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were negotiating with the Ukrainian separatists on behalf of Dutch Safety Board investigators to secure access to the wreckage site.
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Graphic: Wreckage Offers Clues on Why Flight 17 Went Down
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In a statement Wednesday, the safety board said that in the meantime, its experts in Kiev and in the Netherlands were already at work analyzing evidence, including photos and video, that had been obtained from on-site observers.
Investigators said the analysis of the flight recorders would likely take “several weeks” to complete. In addition to retrieving the data the recorders contain, analysts will try to determine whether any of that data had been manipulated after the crash.
Despite the risk that some evidence might have been damaged or lost, the Dutch board said it was confident that both the black boxes and the debris on the ground would yield “sufficient relevant information” to determine the circumstances of the crash. But as is common with technical inquiries, investigators said their aim would not be to apportion blame.
“The investigation will focus on ascertaining facts,” the safety board said.
The Dutch board said it would conduct a separate investigation into the decision-making process that led aviation authorities to determine the area in eastern Ukraine where Flight 17 crashed to be safe for civilian aircraft to fly over.
“At this moment, it is still very dangerous,” Tjibbe Joustra, chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, said in a telephone interview from The Hague, noting the downing of two Ukrainian fighter jets Wednesday not far from the crash site. “It is absolutely necessary that we have guaranteed safe access and freedom of movement so that we can do our work properly.”
He added that the investigators were also negotiating to enlist the help of Dutch or international soldiers to guarantee their safety once they get access to the site.
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