The Hague, Nov 18 (TIWN) Dutch judges have sentenced three suspects in absentia to life imprisonment for the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, killing all the 298 people on board.

Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis opened the Thursday hearing by saying the court took the view that "MH17 was brought down by a [Russian-made] Buk missile." He also said the court believed that the part of eastern Ukraine where the shooting occurred — the separatist, self-declared Donetsk People's Republic — was "under Russian Federation control" at the time of the tragedy.  The judge found the defendants Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Leonid Kharchenko, two of whom are Russian and one of whom is Ukrainian, guilty in absentia and ruled they were jointly liable for the equivalent of approximately 16.5 million dollars in damages to the victims' next of kin. They were each sentenced to life in prison, though they are believed to currently be in Russia extradition is unlikely.  Oleg Pulatov, who is Russian and the only suspect who had legal defense during the proceedings, was acquitted of all charges.  Russia's foreign ministry said it would "examine" the Dutch court's opinion that the missile used to shoot down the MH17 was a Russian-made Buk.  Hundreds of victims' family members traveled to the high security courtroom near Amsterdam's Schipol Airport on Thursday to hear the verdict in the long-running case, which began in March 2020.  "I still miss them," Silene Fredriksz, whose son was killed on MH17 along with his girlfriend, told CBS News partner network BBC News ahead of the verdict. "Putin has never been stopped, and still has not been stopped... I hope the world wakes up now, because we knew it already eight years ago."