‘Suspicious looking men’: Lawyers for MH17 victims are being intimidated by Moscow, reports claim

Anger at Russia mounted this week with reports lawyers of the families of MH17 victims have been subjected to an intimidation campaign allegedly directed by Moscow.

The reports, first carried by Dutch broadcaster RTL, said lawyers had been followed home after court hearings. Others had spotted “suspicious-looking men” in sunglasses loitering around their home addresses.

Dutch authorities who offered the lawyers protection are said to have concluded Moscow’s spy agencies are behind the surveillance.

Lawyers contacted by The Independent said they had resolved not to comment on the incidents – even if asked to by trial judges. But one said they would “not be cowed” into changing course regardless of pressure.

Russia has already been criticised for its refusal to cooperate with Dutch-led investigations into the downing of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing flight over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

The jet, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, broke up in the sky after a Buk anti-aircraft missile detonated above its cockpit, causing the loss of all 298 lives onboard.

Russia says it had nothing to do with the tragedy, and has put forward a number of counter theories, largely implausible, focused on blaming Ukraine. One theory suggested a Ukrainian Buk was responsible; another that a Ukrainian fighter jet fired the missile.

No counter-narrative addresses the main body of evidence, which ties Moscow to a Buk anti-aircraft system that appeared in eastern Ukraine at a time when battles were tipping against Russian-backed forces there.

In 2018, an official international investigation went public with conclusions the Russian military had supplied the system that fired the fatal missile.

In 2019, the Dutch government began a criminal prosecution that charged three Russians and one Ukrainian with murder. It has also laid charges against the Russian state in the European Court of Human Rights – a mechanism necessary to share evidence with the victims’ families.

With a complicated case file now stretching to 65,000 pages, a verdict in the criminal trial is not expected before December 2022. Parallel prosecutions in Strasbourg are expected to continue for another four or five years.

The allegations of intimidation appeared to coincide with the start of hearings featuring the direct participation of families in September.

Over three weeks, more than 90 people gave testimonies about their loss – with many of them accusing Russian president Vladimir Putin of standing in the way of justice. Many of the stories were analytical; others emotional. Some struck the gut.

“They say a man should not cry, but I wailed,” went the testimony of Rob Fredriksz, whose 23-year-old son Bryce died alongside his girlfriend Daisy aboard MH17. “War is always cruel, but the consequences of this mass murder on my family are simply impossible to describe.”

Another, Ria Van der Steen, told the hearings last month that she began having nightmares soon after the disaster. Her relatives were on board, en route to holidays in Borneo. In her dreams, she walked across fields in Ukraine looking for her father to let him know he had died.

“I saw the wreckage, bodies, personal effects,” she said. “I could not stop crying until I woke up screaming.”

Lawyer Peter Langstraat, who represented a dozen of the families at the trial, said the process had been emotional even for him, a “toughened lawyer” of 33 years.

The continued “obstinance” of Russia had complicated the grieving process for the families, he added. Rather than help the families in their search for justice, Moscow had committed to a “strategy of creating their own reality”.

“No information, constant misinformation. Russia is not cooperating in any way and that just causes extra grief,” he said. “It began with the moment they said a Ukrainian fighter had downed the jet. And it isn’t going to change as long as Vladimir Putin is in power.”