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In reply to the discussion: Netherlands opens war crimes investigation into airliner downing [View all]happyslug
(14,779 posts)If they Radar show a plane approaching on a path taken by Military planes, then it would appear to them to be a military target. They would be under orders to shoot down all military planes, so they fired their missiles. That is a Tragedy but NOT a war crime.
Civilians get killed in combat all the time, the only time it becomes a war crime is where they was a deliberate policy of harming civilians. If all the data the missile crew showed that it was a military plane OR even a plane of unknown type, it became a legitimate military target.
Now, the GOVERNMENT that controlled the missile crew may be liable for damages but the missile crew that fired the missile are NOT war criminals unless you can show it was DELIBERATE policy to kill civilians. That does NOT seem to be the case. It was an accident.
To get a criminal conviction you have to show that the missile launch was done when the crew NEW it was a passenger plane OR did not care. If the Missile crew took any precautions, such as checking flight planes that had been filed for planes in the area, then they did all that can be expected of people in their situation. i.e no lack of do care.
Side note: One of the reasons the plane was over the Ukraine was, in appears, that the pilot decided to take a short cut off his scheduled route, to save a couple of hours of flight time. The voice recorder and other black boxes MAY show that to be the case. If that is the case, then the reason the plane was shot down MAY be do to the plane crew flying over a war zone. Such a change in flight plans may explain why the missile crew, if they had access to flight plans, did not know it was a passenger flight, for it was to be further NORTH. in simple terms, it may come out the plane should NOT have been where it was and that was the reason the missile crew took it to be a military plane. If that is the case, then no war crime took place.