Netherlands: no Buk missile systems detected near MH17 crash zone

The July 2014 crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 took place in the region where no Buk missile systems were deployed at the time of the tragedy, according to a leaked document of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service.

According to the document, sent to Dutch prosecutors, flight MH17 was flying beyond the range of all identified and operational Ukrainian and Russian locations where 9K37M1 Buk M1 systems were deployed, TASS reported.

Dutch journalist Max van der Werff, who founded Bonanza Media, said that for him, "the main conclusion is that the Dutch had information about the mobile Buk positions during the conflict."

"This information we had not seen before," he told TASS. "And the military, the Dutch, conclude that they have no information of any Buk missile systems close to MH17."

In all, four documents have been published. Apart from the report on Buk positions, the website revealed a transcript of a conversation between German independent journalist Billy Six and Australian police officers. In this conversation, Six mentions eyewitnesses who observed Ukrainian fighter jets in the sky on the day of MH17 incident.

Van der Werff refused to provide any information about who leaked the documents.

The third document reveals that Australian experts working on the case were analyzing non primary images/screenshots, which, as it turns out, were altered. For example, in one of the pictures, the date when it was modified is prior to the date when the file was created.

"Even after a year, the Australians did not have original photographs to test, using, like, sort of social media nonsense, cropped pictures. That was shocking for me, too," he said.

The fourth document is a transcript of a conversation between Dutch police officers and an unnamed eyewitness, who says he spotted two Ukrainian air force fighter jets overhead right before the incident. A few minutes later, he heard a loud bang and saw the passenger plane coming down.

The Boeing-777 passenger plane operated by Malaysian Airlines crashed on July 17, 2014, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in the east of the Donetsk Region. As a result, 298 people, citizens of 10 states, were killed in the crash. The parties to the armed conflict in Donbass accused each other of being complicit in the tragedy.