Where are the bodies, MH17 families ask
BY
ANTHONY DEUTSCH AND THOMAS ESCRITT
Daisy Oehlers and Bryce
Fredriksz, a Dutch couple in their early 20s, were sitting near the left wing
of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on their way to a holiday in Bali, when “high
energy objects” - as officials later called them - struck the plane over eastern Ukraine
Their bodies were torn apart
and scattered across miles of the conflict zone below.
Three months later, Daisy's
cousin Robby checked into a cheap hotel in Donetsk
Oehlers, a singer, and the
relatives of as many as 50 other victims are growing increasingly frustrated by
the fact that the authorities have not helped them trace loved ones lost on
July 17, when the flight from Amsterdam Kuala
Lumpur
All 298 passengers and crew -
two-thirds of them Dutch – were killed. The Dutch government, a leading Russian
trading partner, still hesitates to call it an attack.
Attempts to recover parts of
the aircraft and human remains have repeatedly been called off due to fighting
on the ground. Families also say the Dutch government is not giving them enough
information. One law firm has said it is preparing to sue the government for
negligence over its handling of the case.
Bryce and Daisy’s relatives
have Bryce’s foot and part of a bone for Daisy, but no more. Relatives of nine
people on board the Boeing 777 have no remains at all. Some families are
waiting for enough body parts to hold funerals.
“How much do you need?” asked
Oehlers. “30 percent? 40 percent?"
He spent three days searching
the site between Donetsk
"You just wonder; what
are they doing?” he said of the authorities. “If it was another country, they’d
just grab their stuff and head out there. I don’t know what the spirit of Dutch
politics is, but I think they are too soft.”
HELD TO ACCOUNT
The Dutch are conducting two
parallel investigations: one into the cause of the crash, and a criminal
inquiry - the single largest in Dutch history. There are now 100 Dutch law
enforcement officials involved in that case, including 10 prosecutors, said
spokesman Wim de Bruin.
But no forensic investigators
have made it to the crash site. That makes the recovery of evidence nearly
impossible.
Many Dutch also believe the
plane was downed by rebels using missiles provided by Moscow
Pieter Omtzigt, legislator
with the opposition Christian Democratic Appeal party and a member of the
foreign affairs committee, says the government is not being open enough.
He submitted a list of 43
questions about the disaster, of which he said 29 went unanswered, including
one about Russian and Ukrainian cooperation and whether crash investigators had
access to key U.S.
"On all these questions,
we haven't had an answer," he told Reuters in an interview. "I want
to see full proof - if you kill 298 people you have to be held
accountable."
“COME GET ME!”
The challenges facing the
Dutch investigators are extreme.
The closest comparison is the
bombing of Pan Am flight 103, over Lockerbie Scotland Scotland
"We searched rivers,
lochs and reservoirs and recovered many personal effects, pieces of aircraft
and debris, as well as other much more difficult 'recoveries' I'd rather not go
into here," said one police diver involved in the search.
Even then, the trial of two
Libyan intelligence agents, at a specially constituted Scottish court in a
disused Dutch military base, secured only one conviction. To this day, many
relatives are convinced that the man eventually convicted was innocent.
In the Netherlands
Silene Fredriksz, Bryce’s
51-year-old mother, said she is having difficulty sleeping. "It is simply
taking too long," she said. "I hear him call: 'come get me!'"
(Edited by Sara Ledwith)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/11
Structure of
the Lead：
WHO- not given
WHEN- not given
WHAT- Malaysia Airlines
Flight MH17 was shot
WHERE- Ukraine
HOW- not given
WHY- not given
Keywords:
1.
scatter : 分散
2.
negligence : 疏忽
3.
mount : 登上
4.
bombardment : 砲擊
5.
diminish : 減少
6.
prosecutor : 檢察官
