The Australian Federal Police and Dutch police and prosecutors investigating the cause of the crash of Malaysian Airlines MH17
believe the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) has failed to provide "conclusive evidence" of what type of munition destroyed the aircraft, causing the deaths of 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.
Testifying for the first time in an international court,
Detective Superintendent Andrew Donoghoe, the senior Australian policeman in the international MH17 investigation, said a "tougher standard than the DSB report" is required before the criminal investigation can identify the weapon which brought the aircraft down, or pinpoint the perpetrators. Their criminal investigation will continue into 2016, Donoghoe told the Victorian Coroners Court on Tuesday morning. He and other international investigators are
unconvinced by reports from the US and Ukrainian governments, and by the DSB, of a Buk missile firing. "Dutch prosecutors require conclusive evidence
on other types of missile," Donoghoe said, intimating that "initial information that the aircraft was shot down by a [Buk] surface to air missile" did not meet the Australian or international standard of evidence.
The Coroners Court in Melbourne is the first in the world to hold an inquest into the MH17 crash on July 17, 2014, and the cause of death of those on board. Iain West (right), the deputy state coroner presided, after the state coroner, Judge Ian Gray, withdrew at the last minute. The inquest opened for a single hour of hearing on Tuesday. A second hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, when West will announce his findings. In the UK, where an investigation into the death of 10 British nationals, is being supervised by Leicestershire coroner, Catherine Mason, all court proceedings have been suspended without a date being set for
inquest. It was reported in the Melbourne court that British post-mortem experts participated in the Dutch investigations, alongside Australian, Dutch, and German teams, plus a joint Indonesian-Malaysian group.
In the Melbourne courtroom press reporters outnumbered representatives of the families of several of the victims. Of the 28 Australian citizens killed, 11 were from Victoria state; 10 were permanent residents of Australia; and 3 had close ties to Australia. A local
newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch reported from the courtroom "the Kuala Lumpur-bound Malaysia Airlines flight... was hit by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine". In fact,
Donoghoe of the AFP said this was an unverified claim by the DSB for "a missile of a type previously provided to Ukraine."
In court, in addition to members of the Coroner's staff, there was one government intelligence agent who kept his official identification tag inside his coat, and
refused to say whether he was an Australian or American national.
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