Dutch prosecutors have said they will "seriously study" claims
by citizen journalists to have identified Russian soldiers implicated in the
crash of flight MH17, shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, The Guardian
wrote on January 4.
The claims have been made by a British-based group of
"citizen investigative journalists" called Bellingcat, which
specializes in trawling through data on social media and other open sources,
the Guardian said.
In an interview with the Dutch TV channel NOS on
Sunday, January 3, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins said his organization had
now identified 20 soldiers in this brigade.
This is "probably" the group that either
knows who fired or has that individual among its number, Higgins said.
The sources for this include photos posted on the
Internet and army data about personnel deployment that was available online,
NOS said.
It added that a redacted version of the report should
be published "shortly."
"We received the report just after
Christmas," Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the Dutch prosecutor's office,
reported on Sunday.
"We will seriously study it and determine whether
it can be used for the criminal inquiry," he added.
In 2014, Bellingcat reported that a BUK mobile
launcher, spotted on July 17 in an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels, came
from a military convoy from Russia's 53rd anti-aircraft brigade – a unit based
in Kursk but sent on maneuvers near the Ukrainian border.
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