Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash: Confusion and disorganisation at MH17 crash site after BBC reporter is handed wallet and ID card
BBC reporter Natalia Antelava was handed the evidence and asked if she could give them to the correct person
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Your support makes all the difference.The confusion and disorganisation at the wreckage site of the downed MH17 flight was on evidence on Monday, when a BBC report showed a confused volunteer charged with collecting evidence filmed handing a wallet and ID card to a BBC journalist.
The incident between the volunteer and BBC’s reporter Natalia Antelava, sees the confused man approach her with an ID card and wallet and ask her, “Who should these be given to?”
According to the report, the footage shows the second of two men to come up to her with evidence and ask her to take it.
The items included a wallet and an ID card that belonged to a Dutch national, one of the 298 the victims that died on the MH17 flight last Thursday.
In a piece of footage from the report, it shows one of the volunteers, who Antelava claims is probably a miner from the area, approach her with the evidence.
He then asks: “Who should these be given to?”
She replies: “I don’t know, but we’ll find out?”
After asking whether Antelava can pass them on to the correct person, she says she will.
After the exchange, an evidently distressed Antelava tells the viewer that this “clearly shows” a “disorganised operation”, with untrained volunteers tasked with the job of collecting evidence having no idea what to do with it when it is found.
Investigators were allowed access to the site on Monday; however, many believe that this is too little too late, with many saying crucial evidence key to discovering what had happened to the doomed flight could have been tampered with or destroyed in the four days since the plane was downed.
The “poor running of the site” and the rebel’s decision to only now allow investigators access to the site has received international condemnation.
On Monday, the US President, Barack Obama, criticised the rebels saying that they had violated the crash site and tampered with evidence.
Speaking to journalists outside the White House, Mr Obama said that the way in which the rebels were managing the crash site was “an insult to those who have lost loved ones” and that their behaviour “had no place in the community of nations”.
He then called on Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who had earlier voiced his support of an international investigation, to use his influence over the rebels and “compel them to cooperate."
Earlier in the footage, we see another piece of evidence showing the confusion from those in control of the site.
When she asks one of the officials if the bodies will be transferred to Donetsk the confused man replies “probably”.
She then asks if they will then be transported to Kharkiv, the city where they are expected to arrive today, and he says: “Unlikely, it is too far”.
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