Jon O’Brien printed out the email and carefully laid it out on the dining table in his rented Airbnb floor in Zwanenburg. He will carry this piece of paper with him constantly for the next few days, he says, while he reads the text in a trembling voice. It is a business e-mail, mainly containing information about landing times. “It’s our son Jack’s last message, he sent it shortly before taking flight MH17.” The few sentences are dear to Jon. “That way we’ll have Jack with us for the next few days.”
More than fifty Australian relatives are in the Netherlands this week to attend the verdict of the MH17 trial on Thursday. The criminal case against the four suspects started on March 9, 2020 – a few days before the Netherlands and other countries were largely locked down due to the corona pandemic. For some Australians, it will be the first time they have seen the inside of the extra-secure courthouse at Schiphol. These relatives have only been able to follow the mega process via a live stream.
Meryn: ‘Luckily we were in the Netherlands on the first two days of the trial, after that we followed the criminal case from home.’
Jon: ‘But not everything. Because of the time difference, it started in the evening for us, sometimes it went on into the night.’
Meryn: “Those first two days were impressive. Especially the moment when the public prosecutor read out the charges against the four suspects. She said, you are being charged with murder. Then 298 names followed.’
Jon: It was beautiful and painful at the same time. The contrast between the attitude of the Dutch prosecutors and that of the Russian Federation could not be greater. With the criminal trial, the prosecutors have given the victims a voice. By pronouncing all the names, they showed that every life was valuable. I see it as an antidote to all the brutal lies that have been spread by the Russian Federation.”
Jon heard the news on the radio. “I yelled, That must be Jack’s plane.”
The day of the disaster, now eight years and four months ago, began like any other day for Jon and Meryn from Sydney. The alarm went off at a quarter to seven. “I got up to make tea and turned on the radio,” says Jon. “A Malaysia Airlines plane crashed over Ukraine,” I heard the newsreader say. “There are no survivors.” I exclaimed, That must be Jack’s plane.’
Jack was 25 years old. That summer he had traveled through Europe for seven weeks. He was about to start a new phase of life, his parents say. He had completed his studies, and after his trip he would look for a home of his own.
Jon: “I took time off to pick him up from the airport. Jack had bought a used car before he left. I had already washed it for him and polished it to a shine. But when I turned on the radio that morning, everything came crashing down.’
Meryn: ‘I couldn’t listen to the radio for a long time after that. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’
Jon: ‘From the beginning, I mostly remember the chaos. There were so many stories about the cause of the disaster. Then it was another missile that shot down the plane, then there was another story about a plane full of dead bodies, then another story that the actual target had been a Putin plane. In the beginning it was mostly confusing. Now we know that the Russian Federation consistently spreads lies to cause confusion, to sow seeds of doubt.”
Meryn: “I had never before realized that people could deal with the truth like this.”
Jon: “I’ve written to the Russian ambassador to Australia about it.”
Meryn: “Jon even wrote Putin a letter.”
Jon: ‘Putin did not answer. The Russian ambassador does. He repeated Russian rhetoric. It was surprising: how can an ambassador maintain such an inconsistent story against a human being whose son was shot out of the sky?’
“I want to understand Jack’s senseless death.”
In the years after the disaster, Jon and Meryn traveled to the Netherlands several times. On one of those trips in 2020, they also visited the wreck of MH17 in a warehouse in Gilze-Rijen. “I want to know exactly what happened,” says Jon. “I want to understand Jack’s senseless death.”
Meryn: ‘After the disaster, we also went to the Netherlands to view the security images of Schiphol together with the Dutch liaison officers. For hours we searched for images of Jack. We found eleven fragments, the longest lasting fifteen seconds.
“We knew that Jack had been out the night before, and that he had to hurry to catch the plane. You can see him walking faster and faster on the security footage. In the last fragment he runs through an empty hall. If only he had fallen, he would have missed his flight, I thought.’
Jon: That’s when Meryn started to cry loudly. The liaison officers who had sat next to us all those hours quietly crept away. Very respectful.
‘We are so grateful to the Dutch. The police, the prosecutors and the court. Everyone has worked for a fair trial. Professional, dedicated and warm.’
Meryn: “The investigation has been thorough, and the evidence against the suspects is overwhelming. I don’t want to prejudge the verdict, but if they are convicted, Russia will of course repeat that it was an unfair trial.’
Jon: ‘While the opposite is clearly true. Even the lawyers of Pulatov, the man suspected of murdering 298 people, have been given ample opportunity to defend him. That is proof that the Dutch legal system is independent.’
Meryn: ‘We are under no illusions. If they are convicted, there is little chance that they will serve their sentence.’
Jon: “Punishment cannot repair the loss.”
Meryn: “What matters is that the MH17 disaster has been investigated, the evidence has been found and carefully assessed.”
Jon: ‘Thanks to the criminal case and the verdict, the real truth becomes clear. Visible and accessible to everyone.’
Meryn: “I doubt that Russian lies and disinformation will disappear after this.”
Jon: “But it is a message to Putin: there is no evidence for your lies, they are meaningless.”