Heavy fighting in E. Ukraine prevents experts from visiting MH17 crash sitehttp://rt.com/news/175976-ukraine-mh17-malaysia-fighting/International experts have been unable to visit the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, due to heavy fighting in the Donetsk area. Kiev and anti-government forces are blaming each other for hampering the investigation.
“We heard indications there's fighting going on,” said Alexander Hug, deputy head for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission in Ukraine.
“The situation on the ground appears to be unsafe...we therefore decided to deploy tomorrow morning,” he added.
Hug expressed concerns that the fighting near the village of Grabovo in Ukraine’s Donetsk region will “most likely affect crash site.”
Finally:
Russia assembles MH17 investigation team
Meanwhile, Moscow has put together a team of experts to take part in the international investigation. Oleg Storchevoy, desputy head of Russia's federal air traffic agency Rosaviation, has been put in charge of the group.
According to Storchevoy, the main task of the international experts will be “finding the true reasons which led to this tragedy,” because “the whole world, including Russia, is interested in objective investigation.”
Lavrov: Hopeful MH17 crash probe will respect ‘presumption of innocence’http://rt.com/news/176040-lavrov-russia-ukraine-plane/Ha, from the first minute, the West and their lapdog media were acting under the principal "
guilty even if proven innocent". Witch hunts during the dark age were done under the same guidelines.
'Not terrorists': Hysteria over MH17 fails to take account of both law and factshttp://rt.com/op-edge/175496-hysteria-mh17-ukraine-facts-terrorists/This an Op-Edge with Research Associate at the INSYTE Group, Dr. Roslyn Fuller. It take up some very poignant legal implications of a possible scenario development:
The first legal question is whether or not accidentally shooting down a passenger plane when you meant to shoot down a fighter jet could be classified as an act of terrorism. In my opinion, the answer is a resounding ‘no.’
Crack open any textbook on criminal law and you’ll find that intent forms a pretty basic part of most crimes. There are some things you simply cannot do by accident and being a terrorist is one of them.
Also:
Who constructed this narrative of a Putin-led Russia somehow in favor of terrorists complete with ready-made petition? Concerned citizens appalled by some unspecified Russian behavior?
Or Alex Konanykhin, former Russian oligarch who has been wanted in Russia since Yeltsin’s days to face charges relating to embezzlement and financial fraud and whose American business ventures include WikiExperts.us (which accepted money to write Wikipedia entries for businesses until it was banned), and Transparent Business (which allows employers to monitor their employees’ computer activity in real time), and who was the Republican National Committee’s choice for New York Businessman of the Year in 2004?
...
Despite originating from a questionable source, Konanykhin’s work has apparently prepared the “Russia sponsors terrorism” line, in much the same way as the Bene Gesserit prepared the hapless residents of Dune to accept the Kwisatz Haderach in Frank Herbert’s famous dystopian novels. First invent the narrative, then press the facts into it. It might have been OK for science-fiction, but law isn’t supposed to work this way.
There are three questions to be answered in regards to MH17: one factual and two legal. The factual question is whether or not the Donetsk rebels shot down MH17 by accident. We do not know the answer to this question at the time of writing, but hopefully this will be revealed. The rest of this article examines how we would answering the two legal questions under the assumption that the factual question has been answered and the Donetsk rebels did indeed shoot down MH17 under the mistaken belief that it was a fighter jet. It is obviously a large assumption, but considering that accusations of sponsoring terrorism are now being bandied about on academic blogs, I think it is well worth exploring.