Russia Denies Role in Downing of Airliner

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and KEITH BRADSHER

New York Times

JULY 18, 2014

GRABOVO, Ukraine — As rescue teams slowly converged on the grisly scene of Thursday’s downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet, the Russian defense ministry sharply denied any involvement in the missile strike that Ukrainian officials said ripped the Boeing 777 from the sky and many began openly questioning why the airline had chosen to fly a civilian aircraft over a combat zone.

The crash site was still unsecured by midday Friday, raising questions about who controlled the flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder and other onboard devices that will help determine exactly how the crash occurred. Rebel spokesmen said they had recovered most of the devices, but it was unclear when and to whom they would turn them over for investigation.

Russian officials were adamant that they had nothing to do with the disaster, continuing to point fingers at the Ukrainian government and military. “In view of various types of speculation concerning operations of the Russian armed forces in the areas bordering Ukraine, we affirm that the anti-aircraft means of the Russian armed forces did not operate in that region on July 17,” the defense ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

After a Malaysia Airlines jet crashed in Ukraine on Thursday, several amateur videos were posted online.

The statement also said that its air force was not flying within Russia in the areas bordering Donetsk on Thursday.

Officials in the United States confirmed late Thursday that Flight 17, with 298 people aboard, had been shot down over Grabovo, Ukraine, by what they described as a Russian-made antiaircraft missile. Fighting in eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists has been marked by the successful use of missiles against aircraft at higher and higher altitudes. The downing on Thursday of Flight 17, struck at 33,000 feet, was the first at cruising altitude for modern commercial jets, however.

The Russian defense statement noted that units of the Ukrainian Army possessed the BUK M1 air defense missile launchers that officials said was most likely responsible for bringing the jetliner down. Much of the speculation surrounding the crash has focused on that system, particularly since the pro-Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine bragged on social media in late June that they had taken possession of a BUK system after capturing a Ukrainian military base.

The crash remained the subject of intense debate in the small Ukrainian town of Grabovo, as residents tried to come to grips with what had unfolded in the fields where they work, just yards from their homes.

Two villagers said quietly that they had seen the flash of a rocket in the sky around the time the plane went down. Victor, who said he was too afraid to give his last name, said that he had been in his garden at the time and that he had seen “the light coming from a rocket.”

He said it had come from the direction of Snizhne, a city where the Ukrainians have been bombing rebel positions frequently for more than a week. “It was a rocket, I’m sure of it,” he said.

The other villager, Sergei, 15, who also did not want to give his last name, said he had been swimming in a nearby river when he saw what appeared to be a rocket being launched into the sky. He said he then jumped out of the water, hopped on his motorbike and sped home.

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As a cloudy dawn came, the full horror of the field was on display. Small white pieces of cloth dotted the grassy farmland, marking the spots of bodies.

Four rebels in fatigues were wandering through the ruins, looking through people’s belongings and riffling through guidebooks and bags.

When asked who was responsible for the crash, they looked incredulous and said that it had of course been the Ukrainian military.

“This wasn’t ours,” said a rebel who identified himself only as Alexei, standing looking at an overhead bin in the grass with a rifle over his shoulder. “Why would we do this? We’re not animals.”

The smell of flesh hung heavily near a broken hulk of metal on the road where a body lay splayed. A foot with part of a leg was lying on the road.

The plane appeared to have broken apart at a great height as pieces were scattered across several miles of agricultural fields. The two wings lay akimbo, as if pushed forward on impact. The plane was full of fuel when it crashed and the fire near the engine was fierce, turning the twisted metal remains into molten pools that had hardened by morning.

“This is direct provocation of the E.U. and the U.S.,” said a rebel, Alexander Nikolaevich, who was walking along the road near the scene. “You see our weapons,” he said pointing to his aging gun. “We started to win the war and the fascists did this to stop us.”

When asked if the fight would continue, he said, “a little bit.”

In Malaysia, the heavily Muslim nation in Southeast Asia mourned on a holy Ramadan Friday, shocked at the sudden loss of a second Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200. Many began openly wondering why the plane was flying over a conflict in eastern Ukraine where increasingly powerful surface-to-air missiles were being used.

In a statement delivered before dawn in Kuala Lumpur , Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia pointedly noted that the International Civil Aviation Organization had declared the airspace safe and that the International Air Transport Association had not restricted travel there. “We must — and we will — find out precisely what happened to this flight,” he said.

Peppered with questions about the aircraft’s route during a news conference late on Thursday afternoon at a Kuala Lumpur airport hotel, Liow Tiong Lai, Malaysia’s transport minister, said repeatedly that the aircraft had been following a safe route that Malaysia Airlines had used for many years and that was still used by most Asian airlines and by many European airlines, including on the day of the crash. “During that period of time, there are also many other aircraft using the same route,” he said.

European and Ukrainian air traffic controllers had continued to route civil flights over the contested area even as the fighting worsened — and even as flights directed by Russian air traffic controllers had apparently started to avoid it.

Ukrainian intelligence has pointed to a fighter named Igor Bezler, the militia leader in the eastern town of Gorlovka, saying in an intercepted phone call that his men had “shot down a plane” on Thursday. Several assassinations are believed to have happened under Mr. Bezler’s watch soon after his forces took Gorlovka, and he took responsibility for killing a number of Ukrainian militiamen in the town of Volnovakha some weeks ago.

According to Russian Internet sources, he was born in 1965 in Crimea, and studied in Russia. He served in the Russian military but moved back to Ukraine in 2003, where he began to work as the head of security for a factory in Gorlovka. Biographies also note that he had worked in a company that performed burial services but was fired in 2012. He has been wanted by the Ukrainian authorities since April 2014.

Mr. Bezler’s nom de guerre is Bes, which in Russian sounds like the first syllable of his last name, but also means demon. There are rumors that Mr. Bezler does not get along with other militia leaders, and that he has had street battles with the Vostok Battalion, though rebels have dismissed those allegations.

In a slickly produced video called “Heroes of Novorossii,” the name of the self-declared insurgent region, Mr. Bezler was shown wearing a light blue beret. He had blue eyes and a long mustache. In a recent interview with the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, he claimed to be holding 14 Ukrainian soldiers hostage and said that the Ukrainian military had fallen apart, “much like the condition of the Russian military in the early 1990s.”

In the interview, Mr. Bezler said he was a Russian passport holder but had a residency permit in Ukraine. He said he sang the national anthem of the Soviet Union every morning, and usually went to bed around 10:30 p.m. He confirmed that he had worked as head of security for the Gorlovka factory, and claimed that he was fired from the burial services company over a fight with the local mayor who he said was demanding bribes.

Peter Marosszeky, a longtime aircraft engineer and former senior executive at Qantas, PanAm and American Airlines who advised Boeing on the development of the 777 aircraft, said in a telephone interview that the 777-200 had an extremely long range and would have enough fuel to divert around a dangerous area during a 12-hour flight if the pilots chose to do so. But he said that airlines have typically not worried until now about surface-to-air missiles reaching planes at cruising altitude, because only a very large missile with a lot of fuel could ascend such a distance.

Mr. Marosszeky expressed skepticism that militiamen could readily fire such a large missile without training as well as cooperation from whoever owned or manufactured the missile. “You’ve got to have special codes and so forth to operate these things,” he said.

While international experts put the blame on whoever fired the missile, questions about why commercial air traffic was continuing in the area — and about when air traffic should be stopped over similar areas of fighting in the future — could prove difficult to answer. The investigation into the loss of Flight 17 is laden with potential disputes over sovereignty.

Mark A. Dombroff, a partner focusing on the aviation industry at McKenna Long & Aldridge, a national law firm in the United States, said that legal precedents indicated that if a plane is downed by military action, the lead country in the investigation is the one over whose territory the plane was shot down. That appears to be Ukraine in this case — but the rebels in eastern Ukraine, where the plane crashed, do not recognize the leadership in Kiev and may try to claim the lead role in the investigation.

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“One of the most complicated factors is getting investigators on the ground in hostile territory,” Mr. Dombroff said.

Ukraine or the rebels — or both — could decide to transfer leadership of the crash investigation either to the country of registry of the aircraft, which would be Malaysia, or to the country of manufacture for the aircraft, which would be the United States, where the Boeing 777 was made.

Alexander Borodai, the prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, the main separatist organization, said the group was setting up a committee to investigate the crash, the news agency Interfax reported. Russian government officials continued to emphasize the official line Friday that the investigation was under Ukrainian jurisdiction.

Leading a crash investigation is in some ways a formality for developing countries, as most of the world’s investigators with crash experience tend to come from countries that manufacture aircraft and certify their airworthiness. Russia’s proximity to the crash site, close ties to the rebels and extensive aviation experience means that it could try to play a sizable advisory role, particularly if the rebels follow through on reported plans to locate the flight data recorders and send them to Moscow.

The crash is another setback for Malaysia Airlines, which has already been struggling to recover from the loss of Flight 370, which vanished on March 8 during a red-eye flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The enduring mystery over Flight 370 has already severely hurt demand for Malaysia Airlines tickets, forcing the airline to offer budget carrier prices even though it bears the costs of a full-service airline.

The financial penalty on Malaysia Airlines was clear on Friday morning when two planes, one from Cathay Pacific and one from Malaysia Airlines, left Hong Kong International Airport five minutes apart, both bound for Kuala Lumpur. The Cathay Pacific was sold out in every class of service, and was so overbooked that the airline took the unusual step of calling at least one passenger at home the night before the flight and telling him that he had been involuntarily bounced to the flight operated by Malaysia Airlines, for which Cathay Pacific has a shared marketing code.

By contrast, the Malaysia Airlines flight was at least one-third empty. The bulk of the passengers appeared to have come from two separate companies that were holding meetings in Kuala Lumpur and had bought blocks of tickets for their employees to get there at discounted prices.

Both Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines have confirmed that they have not flown planes through Ukrainian airspace since March 3.

“We detoured our flight because of political instability there,” said Lee Hyo-min, a spokeswoman at Asiana, which had been flying a cargo plane through Ukrainian airspace once a week from Brussels to Incheon, South Korea, until that point.

Korean Air Lines had been sending 42 passenger and cargo flights per month through Ukrainian airspace, but those flights had been rerouted, beginning on March 3, company officials said.

Civilian jetliners have been shot down on a few previous occasions, including by the United States. The U.S.S. Vincennes used a pair of surface-to-air missiles in 1988 to destroy Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 people, when the ship’s radar operators mistakenly concluded that the plane was descending toward them in a possible attack. A later review found that the jetliner was ascending at the time. It had been following a flight path that Iranian F-14 fighter jets had used in the preceding days to approach the American vessel, before veering away when warned by radio.

In 1983, a Russian Air Force fighter jet downed a Korean Air Lines flight that was traveling from New York City to Seoul by way of Anchorage, after the plane wandered off course.

Chinese fighters shot down a Cathay Pacific airliner in 1954 off the coast of Hainan Island, southern China, in an incident that had its roots in a civil war. China’s explanation at the time was that it had feared the Cathay Pacific plane might actually be a military aircraft belonging to the nationalists on Taiwan, who had lost the civil war in mainland China but remained technically at war.

Keith Bradsher reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Sabrina Tavernise reported from Grabovo, Ukraine. Reporting was contributed by Christopher Buckley in Kuala Lumpur, Neil MacFarquhar in Moscow and Choe Sang-Hun in Seoul, South Korea.

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Six questions about: The MH17 crash in Ukraine

By Zurairi AR

The Malay Mail Online

July 18, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, July 18 ― Malaysians woke up today to an eerily familiar feeling of tragedy: another one of the nation’s airplanes has gone down and, with it, hundreds of civilian lives.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was due to touch down in Kuala Lumpur at 6.10am today from Amsterdam, but it never made it home, crashing instead near the strife-torn border of Ukraine and Russia.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak described it aptly when he addressed the media at the 4am, saying this was “a tragic day in an already tragic year”, following the disappearance of Beijing-bound MH370 five months ago.

Malaysia still could not verify independently the reason behind the plane’s crash, but here is what we know so far:

1. What caused the crash?

Ukraine has accused pro-Russian separatist rebels of shooting down the plane using a vehicle-mounted Russian-built “Buk” ground-to-air missile.

Meanwhile, pro-Russian rebels claimed it was a Ukrainian jet that brought MH17 down, which was denied by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Igor Sutyagin, a Russian military specialist at the London-based Royal United Services Institute was quoted by UK’s Guardian newspaper as saying that either Russians or Russian-supported groups in eastern Ukraine were responsible for the incident.

US intelligence analysts “strongly believe” a surface-to-air missile downed the plane and are reviewing data to determine whether the weapon was launched by pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine, Russian troops across the border or Ukrainian government forces, said an anonymous US official to AFP.

The Buk, dubbed “Grizzly” by Nato, was developed by the USSR in the 1970s to shoot down cruise and other missiles. It has since gone through many redesigns and upgrades, and been widely exported. Ukraine forces also use Buk.

2. When did this happen?

MH17 departed Amsterdam at around 6.15pm Malaysian time.

MAS was notified by the Ukrainian air traffic control that it lost contact with it four hours later.

By 11.30pm, MAS officially announced that it has lost contact with MH17; Interfax earlier reported that the plane was shot down.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak addressed the media at around 4.30 am, two hours before the flight was originally scheduled to arrive.

Malaysia will now be sending a rescue and medical team to Kiev to assist the crash.

3. Where did MH17 go down?

MH17 went down in Ukraine, near the village of Grabovo, 40km from the Russian border.

Reuters journalists reported seeing burning and charred wreckage bearing the red-and-blue colours of Malaysia normally emblazoned on MAS planes and dozens of bodies strewn in fields nearby.

The crash site is near the city of Donetsk, an alleged stronghold of pro-Russian rebels.

News agency Interfax claimed the plane disappeared when it was flying 10km above ground, a typical cruising altitude for airliners.

Additionally, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) insisted that the flight did not fly over a restricted airspace.

4. Who are the victims?

A total of 280 passengers and 15 crew were on the crashed plane.

The nationalities of the passengers cannot yet be confirmed as the manifest has not been released yet.

However according to the European head of MAS, among the nationalities on board were 154 Dutch, 27 Australians, 23 Malaysians, 11 Indonesians, six Britons, four Germans, four Belgians, three from the Philippines and one Canadian.

All the crew members were Malaysians.

5. How does this affect the aviation industry?

Following the incident, commercial flights are avoiding Ukrainian airspace, and rerouted to avoid the area where MH17 crashed.

This includes another MAS flight, MH21, from Paris to Kuala Lumpur, which skirted the crash area.

American airlines have also voluntarily agreed to avoid airspace near the Russian-Ukrainian border, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s department of transport has ordered “flights already airborne” to bypass south-eastern regions of the country.

The European Union air traffic control regulator ― Eurocontrol ― has closed the airspace over eastern Ukraine and planning routes that avoid Ukraine altogether.

6. Why was MH17 shot down?

It is possible that MH17 was shot down by mistake.

A social media site attributed to a top Ukrainian rebel commander said the insurgents shot down an army transporter at the same area as the crash.

The comments by the top military commander of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” suggest the separatists believe they had shot down a large Ukrainian army transport plane.

An anonymous source also told Interfax that the missiles might have been aimed at the plane of Russian president Vladimir Putin, as he was using a similar route.

Several Ukrainian planes and helicopters have been shot down in four months of fighting in the area , and the rebels had shot down three Ukrainian transport planes this week alone.

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Some other Asian carriers abandoned Ukraine airspace months ago

The Malay Mail Online

July 18, 2014

SEOUL, July 18 ― The Malaysian airliner apparently shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine was flying over airspace that a number of other Asian carriers abandoned months ago because of security concerns.

South Korea’s two main airlines, Korean Air and Asiana, as well as Australia’s Qantas said they all rerouted flights from as early as the beginning of March when Russian troops moved into Crimea.

“We stopped flying over Ukraine because of safety concerns,” Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyo-Min said.

Korean Air re-routed its flights 250 kilometres (160 miles) south of Ukraine “due to the political unrest in the region”, an official for the carrier told AFP.

A Qantas spokeswoman said its London to Dubai service used to fly over Ukraine, but the route was changed “several months ago”.

Quizzed as to why Malaysia Airlines had not taken similar precautions, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said earlier today that international air authorities had deemed the flight path secure.

“The aircraft’s flight route was declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organization. And (the) International Air Transportation Association has stated that the airspace the aircraft was traversing was not subject to restrictions,” he said.

Other Asian carriers such as Indonesia’s Garuda, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways said their routes had never crossed Ukraine. ― AFP

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Ukrainian daily publishes transcript of rebels discussing MH17

The Malaysian Insider

18 July 2014

A Ukrainian daily has published what it said was recordings of phone conversations, firstly between Russian intelligence officers and secondly between separatist commanders, about a downed passenger jet believed to be the crashed flight MH17.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 carrying 298 people on board from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur had crashed in a war-zone in Ukraine yesterday, 50km from Russian border.

US intelligence officials say a missile struck the Boeing 777 jet but no one has claimed responsibility in the area where pro-Russian rebels are fighting Ukrainian forces.

The recordings have not been independently verified, The Daily Mail reported on its online portal.

In the first, Igor Bezler, who the Ukrainians claim is a Russian intelligence officer and leading commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, tells a commander: “We have just shot down a plane about ‘30 minutes ago’.”

In the second, more detailed recording, a rebel nicknamed “Major” says the Malaysian Airlines jet was shot down by “Cossacks from the Chernukhino roadblock” adding: “It is definitely a civilian plane… there was a lot of people on board.”

“Major” tells a comrade with the codename “Greek” it was “100% a passenger (civilian) aircraft”.

Greek asked: “What kind of aircraft?” to which Major responded: “I haven’t ascertained this. I haven’t been to the main site. I am only surveying the scene where the first bodies fell. There are the remains of internal brackets, seats and bodies.”

Greek, still hoping at that point a military craft had been downed, said: “Is there anything left of the weapon?”

Major: “Absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medicinal stuff, towels, toilet paper.”

Greek: “Are there documents?”

Major: “Yes, of one Indonesian student. From a university in Thompson.”

Officials for the Obama administration, which had only yesterday stepped up sanctions against Russia for backing the separatists, confirmed the plane was hit by a single missile while at cruising speed.

US Vice-President Joe Biden said that “it was not an accident”, adding it was “blown out of the sky”.

Biden, who had talked with Ukrainian President Poroshenko on the phone, is the most senior US official to raise the idea that the aircraft was deliberately brought down, but he did not divulge who he thought was responsible, the Daily Mail reported.

But US Senator John McCain said there “would be hell to pay” if the plane was shot down by the Russian military or separatists.

“To leap to conclusions could be very embarrassing… But if it is the result of either separatist or Russian actions mistakenly believing this was a Ukrainian war plane, I think there’s going to be hell to pay and there should be,” he was quoted as saying by the British tabloid.

One of the voices is believed to be militia commander Igor Strelkov, who then penned a triumphant war cry on Twitter, saying: “We warned you – do not fly in ‘our sky’.”

It is believed that he thought he had brought down an Antonov-26 military plane of the Ukrainian Air Force. Later, when the horror became clear, the tweet was deleted.

The Malaysian government has immediately asked for an investigation into the crash, the second Boeing 777 plane that MAS has lost in four months.

The first was flight MH370 that mysteriously vanished while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8. The plane and 239 people on board have yet to be found. – July 18, 2014.

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Downing of Jet Exposes Defects of Flight Precautions Over Ukraine

By KEITH BRADSHER, C. J. CHIVERS and NICOLA CLARK

New York Times

JULY 18, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — As this Southeast Asian nation mourned the loss of scores of passengers aboard another lost Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, the precautions instituted by the aviation authorities and flight planners to protect commercial aviation along the Russian-Ukrainian border have been shown to be catastrophically insufficient.

The downing of the passenger plane over eastern Ukraine on Thursday occurred shortly after the authorities in Russia and Ukraine, citing dangers presented by the conflict around the city of Donetsk, Ukraine, closed air space up to 32,000 feet along the passenger jet’s planned route. Ukraine made the changes on Monday, the same day a Ukrainian AN-26 military cargo plane was destroyed by a missile while flying at 21,000 feet. Russia followed with similar restrictions effective at midnight on Wednesday, hours before Flight 17 took off from Amsterdam.

The decision by government officials to restrict the airspace, rather than close it completely, raised unanswered questions.

The attack on the cargo plane, American and Ukrainian officials said, indicated that a more powerful missile than those previously fired in the conflict had been used. These missiles, including SA-11s, SA-17s and SA-20s, can readily strike aircraft at standard cruising altitudes for commercial passenger jets, changing the nature of the menace to civilian aviation.

But the new restrictions underestimated the risks to a startling degree, aviation officials said, leaving Flight 17 exposed at 33,000 feet to missiles known to fly to more than twice that height. Officials in the United States said on Friday that the jet, with 298 people aboard, was most likely downed by an SA-11, which carries a large high-explosive warhead at roughly three times the speed of sound. Variants of the missile can hit targets at altitudes exceeding 70,000 feet, according to IHS Jane’s, a defense consultancy.

Malaysia Airlines flight dispatchers, who draft flight plans, and the jetliner’s crew, which followed the plan provided them from Kuala Lumpur, observed the restrictions imposed by Russia and Ukraine, according to European aviation authorities and the airline. One European aviation official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the missile strike, said the airspace restrictions set by Russia and Ukraine were inadequate, but the airline dispatchers still had the option of plotting routes around the conflict area.

“The general feeling is that if the airspace is closed to 32,000 feet, the last thing I am going to do is fly at 33,000,” he said. “We wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it once we knew they were shooting things out of the sky.”

At a news conference here, Liow Tiong Lai, Malaysia’s transport minister, said that the aircraft had been following a safe route that Malaysia Airlines had used for years and, through Thursday, was still used by several Asian and European airlines. “During that period of time, there are also many other aircraft using the same route,” he said.

Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia pointed out earlier in the day that the International Civil Aviation Organization had kept the flight corridor open, the International Air Transport Association had not restricted travel in Ukrainian airspace, and European air traffic control officials had continued to direct flights through the area. Malaysia Airlines came up with a flight plan within air traffic control parameters, but air traffic control agencies said they did not play an extensive role in evaluating it.

Sergei V. Izvolsky, the spokesman for the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency, said in a telephone interview that it was not up to Russia to give recommendations to foreign air carriers regarding the flight routes for their planes. “They make up their flight plans and coordinate them with their information services,” Mr. Izvolsky said.

Another aviation industry official said that restricting the airspace, rather than closing it, implied that the route was safe even when it was not. “Airlines depend on governments and air traffic control authorities to advise which airspace is available for flight, and they plan within those limits,” Tony Tyler, the director general of the International Air Transport Association in Geneva, said in a statement.

Nico Voorbach, president of the European Cockpit Association, a regional pilot’s union, said: “We have to be able to rely on the information we have from security agencies, governments and national civil aviation authorities. They are normally in a better position to judge if it’s safe.”

Malaysia Airlines issued a statement on Friday saying it had filed a flight plan to cross the area at 35,000 feet, only to be told by Ukrainian air traffic controllers that the plane should maintain an altitude of 33,000 feet. Either elevation was above the restriction, but within range of an SA-11.

A European aviation official confirmed the change to the flight plan. “That was in accordance with normal air traffic control procedures,” said Brian Flynn, the head of network management and external relations with Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based agency that coordinates air traffic in the region. “It would not have been considered unusual.” Based on the radar data, Flight 17 was steady at 33,000 feet at the time of the attack and was on track to stay at that level, Mr. Flynn said.

He said that airspace restrictions were introduced by Ukraine on July 1, initially restricting flights below 26,000 feet, and did not have much effect on the volume of air traffic over the area, indicating that many carriers considered the route safe. Before June 30, around 400 daily flights passed through the area at all altitudes, he said. After the first set of restrictions, traffic dropped by a few dozen flights per day. When the restriction was extended to 32,000 feet on July 14, the daily traffic decreased only about 50 flights from a month earlier, a reduction of around 12 percent.

The majority of air traffic crossing the area where Flight 17 was struck consists of international overflights that were already at cruising altitude and would not be required to adjust their normal routes to accommodate the new restrictions.

One aviation official said that complacency among dispatchers may have been an issue in the decision to continue the route. “They plot that same route every single day,” he said.

Malaysian officials said an airline could not be expected to have the intelligence information and other resources to make independent determinations to avoid an area where air traffic controllers were still sending planes. But some carriers had already done just that. China Airlines, the flagship carrier of Taiwan, said that it had avoided flying over all of Ukraine since April 4. Both Korean Airlines and Asiana Airlines also confirmed that they had not flown planes through Ukrainian airspace since March 3.

Keith Bradsher reported from Kuala Lumpur, C. J. Chivers from the United States, and Nicola Clark from Paris. Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from New York, and Neil MacFarquhar and Andrew E. Kramer from Moscow.

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Emergency Parliament on Wednesday should have two separate motions to discuss not only Thursday’s MH 17 disaster which costs 298 lives  but also the MH 370 disappearance 133 days ago with 239 lives on board

Members of Parliament have received the notice for an emergency meeting of Parliament on Wednesday, 17th July 2014, by the Parliament Secretary Datuk Roosme binti Hamzah by email timed 5.40 am to debate the MH 17 tragedy.

Malaysians are still reeling from the unspeakable and indescribable horror of a second air disaster in less than five months to hit the country and  the national airline Malaysian Airlines,  claiming a total of 537 lives from over 10 different countries.

There are great differences between the MH 370 disaster of March 8 with 239 passengers and crew on board and the MH 17 disaster of July 17 with 298 passengers and crew on board, firstly,  the latter is an atrocious crime against humanity representing inexcusable and unpardonable war crimes while the cause of the latter  remains a great  mystery despite  the largest and longest (and continuing) multi-national land, sea and under-sea search in history; and secondly, the bereaved families, relative and friends of the victims of the MH 17 disaster can have closure although still demanding for justice against the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity in downing the civilian aircraft from the skies while the bereaved families, relatives and friends of the victims of MH 370 disaster are still looking for a closure, as the announcement by the Prime Minister on March 24 that the Malaysian airline “ended it journey in the South Indian Ocean” proved to be “a closure without closure”.

I had no hesitation last night  in immediately welcoming the announcement of the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak for the convening of an emergency meeting of Parliament on  Wednesday on the MH 17 disaster, although it was most unfortunate that my numerous previous calls and attempts for a special parliamentary debate on the MH 370 disaster  in the April and  June meetings of Parliament had not received any support or response whether by the Prime Minister or the then Acting Transport Minister, Datuk  Seri Hishammuddin Hussein.

Just like MH 17, the MH 370 disaster deserves full and proper accountability which cannot wait until the missing aircraft is found – which may be weeks, months or even years, and for this reason, the emergency meeting of Parliament on Wednesday should have two separate motions, so as to  debate not only Thursday’s MH 17 disaster which costs 298 lives  but also the MH 370 disappearance 133 days ago with 239 lives on board.

For Wednesday’s emergency Parliament, the government should present separate White Papers on the MH 370 and MH 17 disasters and support the establishment of an Opposition-headed Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate into all aspects of the twin air disasters and tragedies.

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Flight MH17 – “This is not a disaster. It is Hell”

Economist

Jul 18th 2014

by N.S. | GRABOVO

THE field is filled with bodies. One has on jeans, but no shoes. A second is in a polo shirt and grey socks, one of which is charred. A third wears blue trousers, but your correspondent cannot see the face, smashed as it is under the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Eastern Ukraine has been at war for nearly three months. At first the violence came at a slow drip that few thought could turn into a torrent. Now 298 people—283 passengers and 15 crew—have died in an instant, their deaths seemingly the work of a sophisticated surface-to-air missile.

Passengers onboard Flight 17 had made themselves comfortable for the long journey from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. One, in black leggings, now rests next to a black duffle bag, which is somehow intact. A green luggage strap lies in the grass like a snake. Someone comments on the smell: acrid, heavy. Only death smells this way.

“We thought that they were bombing us,” says Natalia, from the nearby village of Grabovo, referring to the Ukrainian forces who skirmish almost daily with pro-Russian separatists in surrounding towns. The passengers fell, one fighter stationed here says, “from incredible heights”. As they came down, many were “undressed by the air”. One victim somehow kept his black shirt on, but lost half of his face. A can of Gillette shaving cream is wedged under his back. Nearby lie the makings of a holiday: an Avis rent-a-car receipt, a postcard, a toiletry kit with face-wash and a blue and white toothbrush. A pair of chocolate bars with macadamia nuts lie in the grass.

The rescue workers mark the bodies’ locations with bits of white cloth tied to stakes. These men do what they can to find all of the corpses, but the space is vast and the light is short. The only buildings in the area are a chicken factory on one edge of the field, and a stretch of small country homes that begin on the other edge, not far from the smouldering wreckage around the plane’s engine. The firefighters try to extinguish the blaze, but it takes a while—their hose has holes and spews water like little geysers. They were not ready for this. “Nothing has happened here for 30 years,” says one rebel, a local man who goes by the nickname “Tuna”.

A dead boy of about ten years old lies with his face frozen in fear. He has one shoe left on, and patterned socks. He is still strapped to his mangled blue chair, the belt tight across his lap.

It begins to rain, but only lightly. The mosquitos emerge, and the dogs too, barking in the distance. Clusters of rebel fighters grow thicker along the roads. They are in shock. “This is not a disaster,” says a local commander called Aleksey, “it is Hell.” The orange glow of ordnance flickers over a hillside on the horizon.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 19 July 2014, 10:11 am and is filed under
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Malaysia Airlines Ukraine Crash: Fateful Errors, Fatal Decisions

Mark Thompson

TIME

July 17, 2014

Common thread in shootdowns is multiple mistakes

It’s looking increasingly likely that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine Thursday by a Russian-built Buk missile, killing all 298 people on board. While that’s yet unconfirmed, U.S. officials, reviewing satellite data and other intelligence, believe a missile downed the airplane, and that pro-Russian separatists inside Ukraine are the most likely to have fired the killer shot.

We have seen this horror movie before.

It began with a Soviet warplane shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on September 1, 1983. The Soviets initially denied any involvement, but ultimately conceded one of its Su-15 interceptors had shot down the plane, killing all 269 aboard.

With KAL 007, errors piled atop one another to make a seeming impossibility distressingly real. KAL 007’s key error was an improper setting on its autopilot that caused it to stray off course and into Soviet airspace near the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Major Genadi Osipovich fired the R-8 missile that downed the plane without first telling his ground-based commanders that he saw the “two rows of windows” that indicated it was a Boeing 747. He compounded the plane’s error by not sharing that information. “I did not tell the ground that it was a Boeing-type plane,” he told a Russian reporter in 1991. “They did not ask me.”

Nearly five years later after the downing of KAL 007, the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian airliner flying across the Persian Gulf. The crew of the guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes incorrectly identified Iran Air Flight 655—an Airbus A300—for a much smaller Iranian-flown but U.S.-built F-14. The ship’s crew erred despite the fact that the plane was broadcasting its civilian identity and flying a regularly-scheduled flight on a regularly-scheduled route between the Iranian coastal city of Bandar Abbas and Dubai. All 290 aboard died in the July 3, 1988 shoot down shortly after takeoff for what was to have been a 28-minute flight.

Thursday’s shoot down, if that’s what it turns out to be, also had two key errors. The first was the decision to fly across eastern Ukraine, given the civil war roiling that part of the country. In recent days, Russian separatists have reportedly shot down four Ukrainian airplanes near the city of Donetsk. “The Donetsk resistance fighters have captured an anti-aircraft military station,” a Russian television network said three weeks ago. “The skies above Donetsk will now be protected by the BUK surface-to-air missile complex,” said the headline on the channel’s website. Following Thursday’s crash, many airlines changed flight routes to keep their aircraft away from Ukraine.

A total of 857 innocent people died in the three crashes.

How such accidents can be prevented depends on why they happened. If the Soviets truly believed KAL 007 was a spy plane masquerading as a civilian airliner, they still might have shot it down. The same series of mistakes made aboard the Vincennes might yield the same result today; no commander wants to be at the helm of the next USS Stark, which was attacked by Iraq in 1987, killing 37 sailors. And if Russian separatists fired the missile that downed MH17 thinking it was a Ukrainian aircraft, it’s tough to see how it might have been prevented.

Better training would help; more trust would help even more. Firing missiles is a lot like capital punishment. Mistakes can’t be undone.

What’s surprising about the tragedies (assuming Thursday’s was a shoot down) is that each was carried out by a military force—one in the air, one on the sea, and Thursday’s on land. While pro-Russia Ukrainian separatists may have downed MH17, it takes a fair amount of training—and a sophisticated missile system—to blow a commercial airliner flying at 33,000 feet out of the sky.

The U.S. and other nations have been worried for decades that portable, shoulder-fired missiles would end up in the hands of terrorists who would use them to down airliners. Surely, that remains a real concern. But sometimes, as we apparently learned again on Thursday, the wrong hands belong to bodies wearing military uniforms.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 19 July 2014, 10:40 am and is filed under
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MH17 air crash: Battle for control of disaster inquiry

BBC News

19 July 2014

The investigation into the MH17 air disaster is fraught with difficulties.

The crash site is in territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Jurisdiction and control over what emerges as the full account of what happened will be contested fiercely. Even beyond the human tragedy, the stakes could scarcely be higher, with the future direction of the Ukraine crisis seemingly in the balance.

As global anger and shock mounts over the apparent shooting down of the passenger aircraft, here are some of the key issues surrounding what could be a highly contentious air crash investigation.

Who has jurisdiction?

“Responsibility for an investigation belongs to the state in which the accident or incident occurred,” according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN body.

However, almost any major air crash inquiry will be an international affair that draws in other nations due to their technical expertise, resources or – as in this case – the political ramifications of the disaster.

When Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing in March, Malaysia headed the inquiry but invited numerous other countries to participate. In the latest disaster, nations with passengers aboard the doomed jet will likely want to play a role, or launch their own inquiries.

A number of Western nations have already called for a full, independent, international investigation into what happened.

Meanwhile, the Russia-led Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) – the official aviation authority in Russia which counts former Soviet states, including Ukraine, as signatories to its treaty – says any inquiry should be set up under the auspices of the ICAO.

How do you investigate in a conflict zone?

The safety of anyone involved in the investigation will be paramount, as will unfettered access to the site, the security of the debris field – including the flight recorders, and access to anyone who might have seen the crash or be able to shed light on what happened.

Pro-Russian rebels say they will allow international investigators to access the crash site via some kind of humanitarian corridor, but there are international calls for a complete cessation of hostilities to allow a rapid independent investigation.

The first observers from the OSCE team on the spot were restricted in their movements by rebel commanders.

There are also already concerns over the whereabouts of the flight’s “black box” recorders. Reports say rebels already have at least some of the aircraft’s data recorders in their possession and that they had promised to give them to the Moscow-based IAC.

However there is confusion about their location. The OSCE team said they found no-one with information about them.

The uncontrolled removal of items from the debris field could have serious implications for the integrity of the air crash investigation, experts say.

Don’t we already know what happened?

The US intelligence authorities say their monitoring systems suggest a surface-to-air missile brought down the plane, but it was not yet clear who fired it. The two sides in Ukraine’s civil conflict have accused each other of shooting down the jet.

On recordings said to be of intercepted phone calls between a separatist fighter and a Russian military intelligence officer – sourced to the Ukraine’s main security agency, the SBU – the two men apparently discuss the shooting down of a civilian plane in the minutes after MH17 crashed.

But the calls are unverified. And rebels insist their equipment is not capable of bringing down an aircraft at more than 30,000 feet – and that Ukrainian troops must be responsible.

Intelligence agencies will be “crawling all over” the calls and other information from the crash site, Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute told the BBC.

“With what is known in the West together with these things they will probably get to the bottom of it very quickly” but there will likely always be room for doubts, the expert said.

What will investigators focus on?

Former US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Deborah Hersman said the “road map” for investigators in the first day or two would be finding all “four corners of the aircraft” – the nose, the tail and the two wing tips – as well as the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

Investigators would be looking to “sequence” the break up of the plane – find out where it started and how it spread, Ms Hersman told US network NBC.

The flight data recorder will reveal the exact time of the incident and the altitude and exact position of the aircraft, while the cockpit voice recorder will reveal what the crew knew was happening before disaster struck.

Russian experts quoted by the Kommersant newspaper (in Russian), have been detailing what the wreckage of an plane hit by different missiles should look like.

“If this was a Buk, we should expect to see holes in the fuselage, wings etc. But if it was an air-to-air missile, then we should expect elongated ‘cuts’ along the body of the plane, as opposed to ‘holes’.”

Why are the stakes so high?

Correspondents say that if it does turn out that the Boeing 777 was shot down by the separatists – with weaponry supplied by Moscow – then it could significantly alter the terms of the whole debate surrounding the Ukraine crisis.

The disaster comes at a time of already soaring tensions.

This week the Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of downing a Ukrainian military plane on a mission over the east of the country on Wednesday, killing two of the eight crew members on board.

Russia called the accusation – the first direct claim of a Russian attack on Ukrainian forces – “absurd”.

Meanwhile there has been serious fallout from fresh US and EU sanctions against Russia. Moscow has condemned them as “blackmail” and warned of retaliatory action against Washington.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 19 July 2014, 5:27 pm and is filed under
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Pressure mounts on Putin as British death toll from shot plane rises to 10

Michael Settle

Herald, Scotland

19 July 2014

PRESSURE is mounting on Russia over the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 as it was confirmed the British death toll among the 298 victims, who included 80 children, has risen to 10.

US President Barack Obama described Thursday’s crash, from which there were no survivors, as “a global tragedy.”

Circumstantial evidence indicated Thursday’s flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over eastern Ukraine from 33,000ft by a surface-to-air missile fired from near the mining city of Torez, which lies in territory controlled by rebels seeking closer ties to Moscow.

Mr Obama stressed it was not the first time the rebels had shot down planes in the region, adding that a “steady flow of support from Russia” had included heavy weapons and anti-aircraft weapons.

He called for an immediate ceasefire to allow a full investigation. But last night international monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were being denied full access to the crash site by separatists, who apparently fired shots into the air. The whereabouts of the black box data recorder is also unclear, amid unconfirmed reports it may already be in Moscow.

The development raises fears vital evidence has been removed.

Messages on pro-Russian separatist websites immediately after the crash boasted of having shot down what the rebels claimed was a Ukrainian military transport plane. They have since been deleted.

Infants were among the 80 children who died, and toys were among the personal possessions scattered around the crash site.

Also among the victims were more than 100 delegates travelling to an international conference on Aids in Melbourne, Australia. They included Joep Lange, a world-renowned researcher, communications chief Jacqueline van Tongeren and British World Health Organisation worker Glenn Thomas.

But the Netherlands bore the brunt of the tragedy, with 154 of its citizens were killed.

The impact of the crash near the settlement of Grabovo, near the Ukraine border with Russia, scattered bodies over miles of rebel-held territory. As local men searched for victims, makeshift white flags were put down to mark where the bodies lay in corn fields and among the debris. UK police officers headed to the scene to attempt to repatriate the remains of the British victims.

One pensioner described how the body of a woman smashed though her roof. “There was a howling noise and everything started to rattle,” explained 65-year-old Irina Tipunova. “Then objects started falling out of the sky. Then I heard a roar and she landed in the kitchen.”

The British victims named so far include two Newcastle United fans, two undergraduates and a helicopter rescue pilot.

David Cameron, who chaired an emergency meeting of senior ministers and officials in Whitehall, described the crash as an “absolutely appalling, shocking, horrific incident” that “cannot be allowed to stand”; he insisted those responsible had to be brought to account.

The Prime Minister, who spoke to several world leaders including Mark Rutte, his Dutch counterpart, was due last night to talk to Mr Obama. Attempts were also being made to contact Russian President Vladimir Putin. A House of Commons statement is expected on Monday.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Foreign Secretary, said sanctions against Moscow should be dramatically toughened if it is established that Russian-supplied weaponry brought down the plane. But No 10 made clear the priority was to get the facts and to bring the victims home. Following a request from Mr Rutte, a British police team will assist the Dutch in the recovery and repatriation of the bodies.

In New York, the United Nations Security Council called for a “full, thorough and independent international investigation” into the crash.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine’s Prime Minister, blamed the separatists as he demanded all nations support Kiev “to bring to justice all these b******* who committed this international crime”.

Mr Putin placed the responsibility for the tragedy on Ukraine, saying it was responsible for the unrest in its Russian-speaking eastern regions.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 19 July 2014, 11:15 am and is filed under
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Stop blaming Malaysia Airlines for downed MH17

by Jahabar Sadiq

Editor

The Malaysian Insider

19 July 2014

No words can take away the great pain that all of us feel for flight MH17. Nothing could have prepared us for what happened on July 17 as much as nothing had prepared us for flight MH370’s mysterious disappearance on March 8.

No country, no airline and no one deserves a single or double tragedy that has struck Malaysia Airlines, Malaysia and Malaysians. And those who died or vanished in either MH17 or MH370.

It goes without saying then that we should not add words to deepen the pain in our hearts for these two tragedies. Malaysia Airlines – one of the world’s safest carrier – lost 510 passengers, 27 crew member and two planes in the space of 131 days.

But no, some people want to speculate and assign blame immediately to our flag carrier and linking what happened to its lacklustre financial performance. Would any airline try to save fuel and fly over a conflict area?

Several journalists in international magazines and business websites are asking that question. Even the PAS Youth leader is asking why the Malaysia Airlines pilot took a risky route and that MH17 should have followed other commercial planes and flown around Ukraine.

Here’s the thing. The route was declared safe above 10,000 metres and MH17 was not operating in restricted airspace, according to a preliminary assessment from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

The Flightglobal website said while eastern Ukraine has been the scene of armed conflict, including attacks on low-flying military transports, IATA stated that the airspace in which the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER was flying “was not subject to restrictions”.

Why this condescending attitude that it is Malaysia Airlines’ fault?

Would it be fine if the pro-Russian separatists’ boast that it shot down an AN-26 transport plane was correct? Would it be different if another commercial jet crashed?

“They were the wrong airline in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Vivian Lines, global vice-chairman and crisis-management expert at Hill+Knowlton Strategies in Singapore, told the Wall Street Journal.

But is there ever a right airline, a right place and a right time? Any commercial jet that is brought down by a missile is wrong. It does not matter where.

No one here wants to state the obvious. That the 298 people on board MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17 had nothing to do with the conflict raging 10,000m below them.

Based on American intelligence that says a missile brought down MH17, it is logical to say that the person who ordered or who pulled the trigger to launch a missile had no business aiming it at any plane in the sky.

They don’t own the sky. The passengers and crew of MH17 were entitled to a safe flight over Europe or anywhere else in the world. Why blame Malaysia Airlines for using that route when others use it, too?

This is the typical mindset of people who also blame skimpy clothed women for rape cases. The only cause of rape is the rapist, not the victim. So it is with MH17.

Malaysia Airlines’ business is to fly people to their destinations. It has suffered so much over the years, due to mismanagement and lopsided deals, but it has given its “MH stands for Malaysian Hospitality” experience to all and sundry.

The flight and cabin crew have done exemplary work, so it is illogical that any of them would take such a risk if they were told of potential dangers flying over Ukraine.

It speaks so much for Malaysia Airlines that MH17 was packed and some had to take another flight to Malaysia and thus saved from the tragedy.

It also speaks much about those who question Malaysia Airlines or Malaysia, just because both performed badly in the MH370 disappearance.

Both events are separate. We still do not know what happened to MH370 but we know what happened to MH17. But in both cases, let us not assign blame to the Malaysia Airlines flight crew without any evidence.

The prime minister is right to say we are united by grief but you know what, we as a country should be united by purpose.

The political bickering since election 2008 and election 2013 must be set aside and the government must run the country as much as some politicians should stop taking the opportunity to score cheap political points.

Perhaps it is true that Malaysian politicians from all sides have a unique ability to put their foot in when opening their mouths. That could explain the PAS Youth leader’s appalling and disgusting comments.

We need to nurse Malaysia Airlines back to good health because it carries our flag colours and our name. We need to heal this sick divisiveness in Malaysia and come together to mourn the 298 souls on MH17 and 239 on MH370.

Can we do that? Or are we way past caring and having any empathy? – July 19, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 19 July 2014, 1:55 pm and is filed under
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Twin Disasters Turn 2014 Into the Year of Flying Dangerously

Clive Irving

The Daily Beast

7.19.14

A missile attack over Ukraine and a ghostly disappearance over the Indian Ocean have cast a pall over the whole experience of airline travel.

Was there ever such a luckless airline as Malaysian Airlines? As a human tragedy, the double blow can barely be measured in its horror. As a statistic, it’s unparalleled in aviation history: nearly 600 people lost on one airline in less than five months. And for the airline industry the two disasters, one still inexplicable and the other brutally terminal, cast a pall over the whole experience of flying.

Right now one has to cast aside all the reservations about how the airline and Malaysian officials handled the disappearance of Flight 370. The sheer improbability of the dice rolling against the airline again in the form of a missile strike over Ukraine just heightens the agony.

Of all the airplanes in the sky over Europe that morning, Malaysia Flight 17 happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If another airliner from another nation had been in the crosshairs of whoever controlled that missile battery the result would have been equally appalling, but there it is, lying in a Ukrainian meadow, that familiar Malaysian decal on a shattered tailfin.

For more than decade, flying has been made irksome rather than pleasurable by an ever-increasing fortress culture at airports. Huge new bureaucracies have appeared to compel us to remove shoes, have our bodies scanned, display our creams and liquids for inspection. Even the most seasoned and stoic of travelers see flying as a punishing necessity rather than the astonishing utility that it really is.

This year that tremulous feeling of going to the airport became different. The fear was no longer merely of wondering where among all the defenses from check-in to boarding there might be a careless lack of vigilance or an unsuspected weakness in the armor of detection and apprehension of terrorists. Something new was spooking us, Malaysian Flight 370. How in this age can an airplane carrying 239 mortals simply vanish and leave no trace—absolutely no trace, not a fragment anywhere, not the faintest of mayday messages?

The airline industry has failed to give an adequate answer to that. We thought the world was covered by an intricate web of surveillance and it would be impossible for something the size of a Boeing 777 to take its absence and fly for seven hours until, out of fuel, it dived into the ocean. Then we found that the means to prevent this – a constant stream of tracking data from the airplane sent to satellites – existed but the will to pay the price of adopting it did not.

And now this eerie and yet tantalizing mystery is compounded by the effects of a very different fate executed in plain sight by violent means.

Strange, too, that not just the same airline but the same airplane should be involved. Since it first flew on airline service in 1995 the Boeing 777 had never lost a passenger until last August, when Asiana Flight 214 crashed while landing at San Francisco, killing three people. The subsequent investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the pilots had become confused and mishandled the landing. The 777 has had an exceptional safety record – of more than 1,180 so far delivered to airlines, only 11 are no longer flying, for a variety of technical reasons.

As the astounding story of a second Malaysia Airlines disaster broke, the aviation industry was celebrating what promised to be a new golden age of air travel. The Farnborough Air Show in England is the world’s hottest marketplace for airliners. At Farnborough this week the duopoly of Boeing and Airbus announced hundreds of new orders for a new generation airplanes like the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, as well as a first wave of orders for upgrades of two long-established airliners, the Airbus A330 – and the Boeing 777.

Why are the airlines so excited about these new airplanes that they can’t wait to get them into their fleets? The answer lies in one striking advance: they will guzzle far less gas. The three major world manufacturers of jet engines, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney, and Rolls Royce, have invested billions of dollars over the last decade to produce a new class of engine with three great virtues: they are as much as 25 percent more fuel efficient than the previous generation; they are far cleaner in terms of emissions, and they are far quieter.

There has been a lot of buzz at Farnborough about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. After a very long delay before it was fit to be delivered to airlines, and then two battery fires that grounded the whole fleet, the Dreamliner seems finally to be living up to its promise. Airlines flying the 787 are reporting that it is using 22 percent less fuel than its predecessor, the 767, on equivalent routes.

At a time of unstable and high gas prices, intense ticket price competition and extremely narrow airline profit margins (the average profit is a meager 2.4 per cent), savings of this order are almost more than the airline bean-counters dared to hope for. Farnborough was a place to celebrate and savor a more profitable (and planet-friendly) future. That was all until that missile found its target 32,000 feet over Ukraine.

Of course it is necessary to say – and I have said it before – that the psychological impact of airline disasters is out of all proportion to the number of actual casualties. This year will appear to be an exceptionally bad one for the statistics, severely reversing a trend. In 2013 just 173 people died, worldwide, in commercial air crashes. That was down from 388 in 2012.

Despite this year’s 600 dead, the growth of global air travel will be unstoppable. It is increasing at an average rate of between 5 and 6 percent per year. In some regions of the world it is much higher. Airports are struggling to keep up. Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi international airport, for example, designed to handle 45 million passengers a year, will have to handle 60 million by 2017. Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur airport has the fastest growth in Asia, up more than 9 percent per year.

And then there is the simplest of all comparisons in measuring the real as opposed to perceived danger: Contrast those 173 deaths on airlines last year with the global total of people dying in road accidents in the same year: 1.3 million.

None of this makes the pain go away. None of it lessens the outrage at the absolutely needless slaughter of the 298 people aboard Malaysia Flight 17. And certainly none of it alters the reality of an airport experience that has become the most discomforting threshold in the course of our travels. And yet…to a reincarnated visitor from the 19th century, in terms of its everyday safety and regularity, flying would appear truly miraculous. In the 21st century, however, we suppress the magic of it and succumb to the fear of it.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 19 July 2014, 11:06 am and is filed under
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Ukraine, rebels agree on security zone at crash site

Filip Warwick and Doug Stanglin

USA TODAY

19.7.14

HRABOVE, Ukraine — Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists agreed Saturday to set up a security zone around the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines jet to allow the orderly removal of the bodies of the 298 people killed in the shootdown of MH17 over eastern Ukraine two days ago.

The Malaysian airliner — en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 183 passengers and 15 crew members — crashed into rebel-held territory on Thursday after being hit by what U.S. officials say was a SA-11 surface-to-air missile. There were no survivors.

Ukrainian Security Service head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko said in televised remarks Saturday that trilateral talks, involving Russia, had agreed on a 7-square-mile security zone “so that Ukraine could fulfill the most important thing — identify the bodies (and) hand them over to relatives,” Ukrinform reports.

The announcement of an agreement followed charges by Ukraine that local militia in the restive eastern Ukraine region near the Russian border had removed at least 38 bodies from the crash site near the village of Hrabove.

On a dirt road near the site Saturday morning, separatist officials from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s ministry of internal affairs began moving bodies in what appeared to be an unorganized and ad hoc operation.

At one point, about 15 bodies had been laid out on the rural road.

“Experts are removing the bodies,” a separatist soldier who identified himself as Commander Ugriumny and seemed to be in charge told reporters. “Where we will move them, we will wait and see.”

Until the soldiers arrived in a 10-vehicle caravan, the golden fields in this remote region near the Russian border were virtually empty, except for the decomposing bodies, some still strapped to their airline seats, and wide swaths of plane wreckage. There were no emergency services vehicles, no separatist soldiers.

The militiamen, who began setting up a perimeter, cordoning off the area and putting up tents, scoffed at charges by the Kiev government that bodies were being removed from the scene.

“No one stole any bodies,” said Commander Ugriumny. “Or have taken them anywhere.”

Malaysia Minister of Transport Liow Tiong Lai had said earlier Saturday that his country was “deeply concerned” about whether or not the crash site is being properly secured.

Malaysia “calls for those responsible to be found, and to face the full force of justice without delay,” Liow said.

An international delegation visited the crash site Friday evening but was only allowed a superficial visit to see one small portion.

Among the passengers from 11 countries were 80 children, an acclaimed AIDS researcher from Amsterdam, a nun and teacher from Sydney, a Dutch senator, a Malaysian actress and a World Health Organization spokesman.

One American with dual Dutch citizenship was among the dead.

Ukraine has accused Russia of helping rebels destroy evidence at the crash site. Russia and separatist groups have denied being responsible for the shootdown.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 19 July 2014, 11:46 pm and is filed under
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Ukraine rebels ‘destroy MH17 clues’

BBC News

19.7.14

Ukraine has accused pro-Russian rebels of trying to destroy evidence of “international crimes” at the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines plane.

The government said the rebels led by Russia were preventing international representatives and its own experts from starting their investigation.

It is believed flight MH17 crashed after being hit by a surface-to-air missile fired from a rebel-held area in east Ukraine on Thursday.

All 298 people on board died.

The Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. It fell between Krasni Luch in Luhansk region and Shakhtarsk in the neighbouring region of Donetsk.

Latest figures released by Malaysia Airlines show the plane was carrying 192 Dutch nationals (including one with dual US citizenship), 44 Malaysians (including 15 crew), 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians and 10 Britons (including one with dual South African citizenship, four Germans, four Belgians, three from the Philippines, and one each from Canada and New Zealand.

Pressure on Russia

In a statement, the Ukrainian government complained that “the terrorists” had taken 38 bodies to a morgue in the rebel-held city of Donetsk.

It said the rebels were also trying to transport the plane’s wreckage to Russia.

Both Britain and the US are now publicly pointing the finger at rebels in eastern Ukraine and maybe Russia as well.

Both say they think the Malaysian airliner was probably shot down by a missile fired from rebel-held territory – and perhaps with Russian help.

But turn on Russian TV and you enter a parallel universe, where Kiev, not Moscow, is the likely culprit: speculation that Ukrainian jets may have tailed the airliner before it crashed; colourful theories that maybe Ukrainian forces were really trying to target Putin’s Presidential jet and got the wrong plane.

The question is which version is shaping President Putin’s thinking. And whose opinion will he bear in mind as he decides how to handle this crisis.

The world community, Ukraine added, must put pressure on Russia to pull back its terrorists and allow Ukrainian and international experts to carry out their inquiry.

Speaking in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong-lai said it would be “inhumane” if Malaysian experts would not be given access to the crash site.

He also expressed concern that the site was not properly sealed and could be tampered with.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said it was essential for investigators to get full access to the crash site.

“Quite possibly there are attempts in place to sanitise the site. The site needs to be secure. The investigation needs to take place. And frankly anyone who tries to obstruct this is no friend of justice, is no friend of peace,” he said.

Russia has meanwhile hit back at the West, accusing it of waging an information war against Moscow.

The defence ministry challenged Ukraine to produce details of what its anti-aircraft systems were doing at the time of the crash.

A team of international observers said the rebels had limited their access to the wreckage.

An OSCE spokesman said on Friday that access to the site had been controlled by armed men, with one firing shots into the air.

Both Ukraine and the rebels have accused each other of shooting it down.

Ukraine’s government called the disaster an “act of terrorism” and released what they say are intercepted phone conversations that proved the plane was shot down by separatists.

But the pro-Russian separatists said a Ukrainian air force jet had brought down the airliner.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 19 July 2014, 7:08 pm and is filed under
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Experts: Whoever brought down Malaysian jet had extensive training

By David Willman

Los Angeles Times

July 19, 2014

Whoever fired the surface-to-air missile that brought down a passenger jet over eastern Ukraine would have needed extensive training to execute the mission, according to military experts.

Taking down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, traveling about 600 mph at an altitude of 33,000 feet, required vastly more expertise than, say, firing a shoulder-braced rocket-propelled grenade at a slow-moving helicopter. A crew of at least four would have been needed to accurately fire the truck-mounted Russian-made SA-11 missile, also known as a Buk missile system.

“You’ve got to have people who are technically competent,” said retired Army Maj. Gen. Stephen V. Reeves, who served as an intelligence officer in Western Europe.

The SA-11 is a 1972-era weapon system, and is not as technologically advanced or easy to operate as more modern weaponry.

“This is a hard system to use, in today’s terms,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly, a former director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, who estimated that each of the SA-11 crew members would have needed at least six months of training.

“You don’t just take some folks off the street, and 30 days later they’re trained,” he said.

The SA-11 system is designed to identify a target with radar before and throughout the flight of the missile. The radar data is transmitted continuously to the missile, guiding it toward the target.

However, O’Reilly said that while the SA-11 can find and follow targets at altitudes up to 70,000 feet, the system is unable to distinguish between a military transport plane and a large passenger aircraft.

Given the Malaysian jetliner’s altitude and cruising speed, O’Reilly said, the SA-11 probably was fired within 25 miles of the crash site.

Whoever did this wasn’t someone that had a little bit of training…. These people were trained on it for a long time. – Retired Army Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly

Those who fired at the Malaysian jetliner Thursday “knew they were shooting a large aircraft,” O’Reilly said. “It’s such an old technology, it could very conceivably be they thought they were shooting down a military cargo plane or a large tanker. It is not unlikely they really thought that they were shooting down a military aircraft.”

The SA-11 missile is an explosive warhead armed with a “proximity fuse” that detonates within 110 yards of a target. This means, O’Reilly said, that Flight 17 was downed by the force of the blast, not by a direct collision with the missile.

“It’s not designed to hit the plane,” he said. “It’s designed to get close, and the proximity fuse automatically goes off.”

Debris from the wreckage, particularly chunks of the jetliner, probably will contain tell-tale fragments of the SA-11. However, the forensic work of verifying the type of weapon would still fall short of identifying who fired it because of the SA-11’s ubiquity in the region, both O’Reilly and Reeves said.

Senior U.S. officials have said the missile appears to have been fired from an area of eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed separatists, some of whom were spotted with an SA-11 launcher shortly before the missile was fired.

O’Reilly and Reeves noted that both the Russian and Ukrainian armies possess SA-11s. They also said it was possible that the Russia-aligned militants possess them. The crash occurred in an area of eastern Ukraine held by the separatists.

“That’s the [missile] system that you pick to do the very thing that it did,” O’Reilly said. “So that there’s some deniability. Both the Ukrainians have it and the Russian army has it.”

It’s possible, Reeves said, that specialized Russian military personnel—”Spetsnaz”—were directly or indirectly involved with the crew that fired the missile.

“Whoever did this wasn’t someone that had a little bit of training and some Russian advisors told him how to do it. These people were trained on it  — for a long time. The fact is, they shot one [missile] and they hit. They’re pretty proficient, O’Reilly said.

 “If it wasn’t Russians or Russian advisors, it had to be former Russian air-defense personnel. Someone had to be formally trained in order to use it.’’

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 20 July 2014, 8:18 am and is filed under
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Malaysia Airlines crash: How can we hold Putin to account?

By Charles Crawford

Telegraph

July 20th, 2014

The hours drift into days following the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. Yet there is no difficulty in identifying those responsible for this outrage. Russian military intelligence (GRU) operatives and technicians are swarming over eastern Ukraine and probably much of the rest of the country, monitoring in real time what is happening. Some are Russian troops operating illegally in Ukraine. Others are Ukrainians (or motley mercenaries from Serbia and elsewhere) on the GRU payroll.

The cause of the attack on the plane will have been known immediately to the Russian side. Missiles capable of hitting aircraft at that altitude cannot be fired without complex codes and technical support. The Russians know everything about the attack, down to the serial number of the missile and the names and breakfast rations of the people who ordered the attack. The Russians also know exactly what links there are (if any) between the people who fired the missile and their own GRU command structures.

The Americans will know a lot of this, too. We may not like global IT surveillance, but it resolves situations like this. Washington is doubtless poring through myriad satellite images and thousands of conversations in Russian military slang to establish in minute detail what happened when the missile was fired and who ordered it. Likewise, the Ukrainians know plenty – they do not have the GRU’s resources, but they are highly motivated to follow what the “rebels” and “separatists” are doing.

The issue, in short, is not any doubt about what actually happened. It is that the Russians – who know the most about it – are refusing to hand over to the world everything they know. Nor are they throwing their weight behind a rapid international effort to help the victims’ families by sealing and investigating the crash area in a normal way.

Instead of a principled, helpful and sensitive response from Moscow, we see a macabre spectacle of diplomatic bluster and evasion while the crash site is despoiled and manipulated. Murky alterations to the Wikipedia MH17 site are traced to Russian official buildings. Bodies are piled in unguarded railway refrigerator wagons. International officials are threatened at gunpoint by belligerent fanatics loyal to Moscow.

Poland has not been happy with the Russian performance following the plane crash at Smolensk in 2010 that killed President Lech Kaczynski and scores of senior Poles en route to a memorial service for the Katyn massacres. But Russia insists that under international law it should take the lead in investigating that disaster, as the plane crashed on Russian territory.

Here, Russia has a very different problem: the plane crashed in Ukraine. Moscow therefore faces the indignation and contempt of a wide range of countries for its handling of this crisis, above all for not using all its influence to push the rebels out of the way so that normal international procedures can take place.

This vile policy, on the part of permanent member of the UN Security Council, creates dilemmas for the rest of us – not least because Moscow’s behaviour and tone go way beyond anything normal or honourable, as understood under the international rules for such incidents that Russia itself helped to draft.

The Americans are in a difficult position. If they know that Russia’s GRU personnel were closely involved in the decision to attack the plane, this means that the highest political levels in Moscow carry direct command responsibility.

What to do with that information? If it is made public, calls for strong action against Putin and his team will swell in Washington and around the world. Yet what action might make a positive difference? More sanctions? Diplomatic isolation? Or would it be better to use this information only in tough private conversations with the Russians, in the hope of de-escalating the crisis and striking a strategic deal on Ukraine?

Under President Obama, US leadership has been scaled right back, in large part to avoid taking such awkward decisions. Obama none the less has a point in not wanting to get too far ahead of the USA’s dithering European allies – hence his typically detached assertion that it is up for Europe to “wake up” and consider tougher measures against Moscow. European leaders including David Cameron pile on the rhetoric (“Putin is a pariah”; “The world’s eyes are on Moscow”; “Europe and the West must fundamentally change their approach to Russia”) but without evincing any clear sense of what should be done when Russia digs in its heels.

The diplomatic problem is bad, and getting worse by the hour. What if it is established beyond any doubt that officers under Moscow’s command did have a hand in the murder of all those passengers? No one wants to say. But we can be sure that if GRU operatives are implicated in this catastrophe, under Putin’s leadership Moscow will do whatever it takes to deny any responsibility. If victims and their families are denied all human decency while feverish efforts are made to hide evidence of the crime, too bad.

The hardest challenge in diplomacy? Dealing with ruthless leaders who enjoy showing defiance based on a policy of “the worse, the better”.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 20 July 2014, 10:57 pm and is filed under
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MH17: Malaysia Airlines crash victims robbed of their dignity by rebels

Robert Mendick By Robert Mendick, Patrick Sawer and Tim Ross

Telegraph

19 Jul 2014

 Moscow-backed rebels accused of removing some of the corpses, taking their possessions and destroying evidence

International anger was intensifying on Saturday night over the treatment of victims of Flight MH17, amid claims that bodies had been left to rot among the wreckage, at the mercy of looters.

As Moscow-backed rebels were accused of removing some of the corpses, taking their possessions and destroying evidence, Philip Hammond, the new Foreign Secretary, said the “world’s eyes” were on Russia and demanded that the victims be treated with “proper dignity and respect”.

The plane was shot down on Thursday, apparently by pro-Moscow separatists backed by the Russian president Vladimir Putin. It emerged on Saturday that two British fathers and five of their children were killed in the attack as the last of the 10 British victims was named.

On Saturday, independent investigators were again denied proper access to the scene by masked and armed separatists, who control the crash site in eastern Ukraine. One source suggested some of the rebels were “intoxicated”.

It emerged that bodies were being left to rot amid the wreckage in temperatures of 85F (29.4C), and Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman for the investigators at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said after being given partial and temporary access: “Some of the body bags are open and the damage to the corpses is very, very bad – it is very difficult to look at.

“It basically looks like the biggest crime scene in the world right now, guarded by a bunch of guys in uniform with heavy firepower who are quite inhospitable.”

Ukrainian officials accused the rebels of destroying evidence of “international crimes” and allowing cash and credit cards to be stolen from the dead. They also claimed 38 corpses had been taken to a mortuary in Donetsk, which is under separatist control, preventing investigators from reaching the bodies.

Amid growing condemnation Mr Hammond told the Telegraph: “It’s a fundamental principle of human decency that the victims and their possessions should be treated with dignity. I have seen reporting in the media which suggests that these norms are not being respected. We have no evidence that this is the case – but if it turns out to be so, those responsible can be sure they will be held to account for their crimes.”

A senior British source said: “Putin needs to feel some pain before he will change his behaviour.”

Frans Timmermans, Mr Hammond’s Dutch counterpart, whose country lost 193 citizens, said: “We are already shocked by the news we got today of bodies being dragged around, of the site not being treated properly … People are angry, furious.”

John Allen, a lawyer, and Andrew Hoare, a banker, were the last two of the British victims to be named yesterday. Both men perished along with their wives and five of their children. A third Briton named on Saturday was Robert Ayley, 29, a father of two, who was travelling alone back to his home in New Zealand where he lives with his wife Sharlene and their children Seth, four, and Taylor, two.

Before boarding, he sent an email to his mother: “Right now, I’m just looking forward to seeing the boys and Sharlene. It’s been a long, long journey. I hope all is well, if we don’t talk before hand, I will see you on Saturday. Lots of Love Rob.”

Andrew Hoare, 59, a banker who lived in Luxembourg, his wife Estella Vermeulen-Hoare, 51, and their two sons Friso, 14, and 12-year-old Jasper all died in the disaster.

Mr Hoare was taking his family, who were travelling on Dutch passports, to Borneo “for the holiday of a lifetime”. John Allen, 44, an Amsterdam-based British lawyer, also died on board along with his wife Sandra Martens and their three youngest children Christopher, Julian and Ian.

Gilbert Crawfurd, a Dutch lawyer and a friend of Mr Allen’s, expressed concern that separatists were preventing OSCE officials from inspecting the site. “If this had happened to the US/France, paratroopers would have landed there to secure the crash site,” he said.

Further concern over the treatment of bodies was raised by the twin sister of Glenn Thomas, a World health Organisation press officer who was named as one of the dead on Friday.

Tracey Withers, 49, from Blackpool, said her brother always wore their mother’s wedding ring after she died of cancer at the age of 53 in 1987, and now she feared it would be stolen from him.

“It’s just very cruel that they could do that to their fellow human beings,” she said.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 20 July 2014, 12:36 pm and is filed under
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How the three MACC officers implicated in TBH’s death could be cleared of indiscipline by the MACC special investigation team without having to suffer any penalty whatsoever?

This forum on the fifth anniversary of the mysterious death, in fact murder, of Teoh Beng Hock at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) premises in Shah Alam on July 16, 2009 is held under the shadow of another great tragedy and  injustice, the  MH 17 disaster on  17th July where 298 innocent lives from some 10 nations were snuffed out in an instant when the Malaysian Airlines Boeing  777 jetliner  was blown out of Ukraine airspace by a surface-to-air missile.

On that fateful Thursday night, the  Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak promised that “no stone would  be left unturned” to investigate the MH 17 tragedy and that the perpetrators of the crime against humanity must be swiftly brought to justice.

I had given full support to Najib’s statement calling on all Malaysians to stand united as one with the  Prime Minister in seeking “swift justice” against the perpetrators of the heinous crime against humanity in causing the MH 17 tragedy.

As I said at  the candlelight vigil and prayer for MH 17 a short while ago outside this hall, Malaysians have prided themselves of being blessed in a land without natural disasters like earthquakes, typhoons or volcanic eruptions, but we have recently been reminded that Malaysians are vulnerable to  many man-made disasters – two of which hit Malaysia in the form of unprecedented air disasters MH 370 and MH 17 in less than five months, claiming 537  innocent lives.

The cause of the MH 370 disappearance disaster is still unknown after 132 days despite the largest and longest multi-national land, sea and sub-sea search in human history, and the families, relatives and friends of the 239 passengers and who perished on March 8 are still denied the release of a full “closure”.

The relatives, families and friends of the 298 innocent lives who perished in MH 17 face a different torment – who, how and why their lives were snuffed out in an instant over Ukraine airspace, and the added ordeal of how  to bring the bodies of their loved ones home for decent burial.

Tonight, we are focused on the fifth anniversary of the murder of Teoh Beng Hock, whose family had undergone torment in the past five years for they have been denied full  closure, ceaselessly  fighting for the truth – why and who was responsible for TBH’s death at MACC premises five years ago and the bringing of the killers to justice!

When Najib said on Thursday night that “no stone will be left unturned” to find out the causes of the MH 17 and his commitment to bring the perpetrators of the tragedy to “swift justice”, I am eerily reminded of the same commitment, in fact the very same words of “no stone will be left unturned”, which  he made to the TBH family about TBH’s death five years ago.

But it is now five years and we are no nearer to bring to justice the killers of TBH despite Najib’s pledge of leaving “no stone unturned” to find out the truth of TBH’s death at the MACC premises in Shah Alam.

On the exact fifth anniversary of TBH’s death on July 16, MACC issued a statement  that the three MACC officers implicated in the death of Teoh Beng Hock by the TBH  Royal Commission of Inquiry had been cleared of indiscipline by the MACC special investigation team comprising its disciplinary board and the complaints committee (one of the MACC independent oversight committees).

This is a most shocking and scandalous announcement – as not only the memory of Teoh Beng Hock and TBH family, but decent Malaysians as a whole deserve full explanation how the three MACC officers implicated in TBH’s death could be cleared of indiscipline by the MACC special investigation team, without having to suffer any penalty whatsoever!

Is the life of a person, who is not an important personage in the corridors of power in Malaysia, so cheap that it could be snuffed out in a most criminal manner without having to suffer any retribution?

Anybody who revisits the Report of the RCI on Teoh Beng Hock  can only feel outraged and scandalized by the announcement of the clearing of the three MACC officers implicated in TBH’s death.

The TBH RCI committed a great flaw when it failed to affix responsibility for Beng Hock’s death, whether on the MACC officers or  on the MACC although there were evidence galore before the RCI proceedings.

It was not just persons, namely various MACC officers led by Hishammuddin Hashim the then Selangor MACC Deputy Director and the “mastermind” of the illegal and massive 33-officer MACC “operation”, who must bear responsibility for Beng Hock’s death but also the institution of MACC as well.

Although no sufficient evidence was adduced at the RCI to establish Beng Hock’s killers, it was clearly established at the RCI that there was a conspiracy of “blue wall of silence” among the MACC officers to “cover up” what actually transpired at the MACC resulting in Beng Hock’s death, with the RCI publicly condemning the MACC Selangor officers (except for two “brave” witnesses) as a pack of liars who blatantly told lies and perjured at the RCI.

Since the publication of the RCI report in July 2011, Najib had washed his hands and cleanly forgotten his solemn undertaking to Beng Hock’s family to “leave no stone unturned” to find out the real causes of Beng Hock’s death – in other words, to hunt down Beng Hock’s killers!

After the publication of the RCI report, Najib said he left the decision of penalising the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) trio named by the RCI to the MACC, the police and the Attorney-General.

But the MACC trio implicated in TBH’s death had been completely exonerated and not “penalised” in any manner by the triumvirate of police, AG’s chambers and the MACC – which is not only a gross travesty of justice but a violation of Najib’s “no stone unturned” pledge to the TBH family.

We need only refer to the Conclusion of the Report of the RCI on TBH to sense the gravity and enormity of the travesty of justice in exonerating both the MACC trio and the MACC in the killing of TBH, where the RCI referred to the criminality of the MACC officers in “’a blue wall of silence’ based on brotherhood ties among those (MACC) officers” – “the untruths spouted by the MACC officers to cover up the nefarious activities that took place on the 15th and the 16th”, i.e the events leading to the death of TBH.

Para 363 of the Report of the TBH RCI is most revealing:

“363.  But what is most saddening and regrettable is that the operation that the Selangor MACC embarked upon led to the death of TBH, a promising young man in the prime of life who had everything to look forward to. His family was robbed of a son and brother, his fiancée of a husband and his then unborn child of a father. We can feel the pain and anguish that they must have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of the callous machinations and attitudes of the MACC officers who were  involved in the operation.  We express our heartfelt sympathies on the loss that the family of TBH and his fiancée and son have had to bear and continue to bear.  We can only hope that time will assuage their pain.”

The TBH RCI was established not “to feel the pain and anguish” of TBH family or to convey condolences to TBH family for the death of TBH but to ascertain, among other things, TBH’s killers and to act against the MACC and its officers for their “nefarious activities” and “callous machinations” resulting in TBH’s death.

The TBH RCI  had abdicated  its specific term of reference “to enquire into the death of Teoh Beng Hock and the circumstances surrounding and contributing to his death”.

Para 336 of the TBH RCI said: “336: We are of the view that the death of TBH should not be in vain and all attempts should be made to improve the functioning of the MACC and the administration of criminal justice in the country as a result of our inquiry into the workings of the MACC. The evidence adduced showed that the MACC officers were prepared to go to great lengths to lie.”

The scandal of Beng Hock’s tragic death at the MACC headquarters in Shah Alam on July 16, 2009 is not just MACC officers “were prepared to go to great lengths to lie” but the MACC as an institution which went to great lengths to participate in a conspiracy of silence and lies to pervert the course of justice to “cover up” the actual causes and circumstances of Beng Hock’s death.

How can the triumvirate of Police, AG’s Chamber and MACC clear the three MACC officers implicated in TBH’s death, as well as MACC itself, when the RCI had made such devastating and damaging damnations  about the nefarious criminality of the MACC and its officers resulting in the TBH’s death?

Beng Hock’s death  would be “in vain” if firstly, his killers remain free and unpunished; and secondly, the MACC is not held responsible and liable for his death and instead allowed to “go to great lengths” to participate in a “cover-up” of the actual causes and circumstances of Beng Hock’s death at the TBH RCI, with MACC officers telling “lies after lies” at the RCI.

I call on Malaysians to stand for  justice and to make a commitment that they will not rest until the “cover-up” of Teoh Beng Hock’s criminal and senseless murder is exposed and the killers, including MACC, are brought to justice.

DAP and Pakatan Rakyat will continue to highlight the injustice of Teoh Beng Hock’s unresolved murder at MACC premises in the next meeting of Parliament.

(Speech  at the fifth anniversary Teoh Beng Hock memorial forum “Human Rights and Political Justice” at the Kuala Lumpur Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall (KLSCAH) on Saturday, 19th July 2014 at 8.30 pm)

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 20 July 2014, 7:47 pm and is filed under
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