Appeal for MH17 witness video shows crashing Antonov 30 by error

Dutch national police produced a video in which next of kin Silene Fredriksz-Hoogzand tells her grief. The purpose of the video is to address witness in Eastern Ukraine who might have information which helps in finding the suspects of the MH17 downing.

The video however has a serious error. It shows video images of the downing of an Ukraine air force Antonov 30. The downing by MANPADS occured at June 6, 2014 and was shot down over Slavyansk. It is said to have crashed near Svyatogorsk north of Slavyansk.

Aviation-safety has the details of the Antonov 30 shot down here.

NOS Nieuwsuur reporter Gert-Jan Dennekamp was first to notice this error.

Opmerkelijk: Video OM met oproep getuigen MH17 toont brandend vliegtuig dat neerstort. Beelden zijn niet van MH17.

— Gert-Jan Dennekamp ()

 

A video of the crashing Antonov 30 can be seen

The same images can be seen in the ‘appeal for witness’ video produced by the Dutch national police. The image below on the left is a screenshot of that video. The images of the Antonov downing can be seen after

Image left screenshot police witness video. Image right screenshot Antonov 30 shotdown.

Details on the video

Spokesman Wim de Bruin of the Joint Investgation Team told the video was produced in Kiev. He referred to spokesman Thomas Aling of the Dutch National Police for more information on the video.

Ahling stated that there was a lot of stress in Kiev at the time the video was published. That was because of the cyberattack on Ukraine organisaties. So this might be a reason the video-editor searched for some videos and added to the interview.

Likely the person who made the video has no clue about MH17 and did some Google-ing on MH17 video’s. He found , saw the title ‘Malaysia Airlines MH17 of fire Raw video’ and done.

Nobody of the Dutch national police checked the content of the video before it was published.

RTL Nieuws also spoke to the spokesman Thomas Aling.  Ahling stated the video clip was added in Ukraine to the video made by the Public Prosecution Service in Holland. Nobody of the Dutch police checked the video before publication.

Distribution of video

There is some confusing about where the video was made available for watching. Dutch EenVandaag reported about the publication of the video here. 

Several media reported the video would be placed at the Donetsk Institute of Information (DII) website. Spokesman Thomas Aling confirmed this in a telephone conversation at July 4 with me.

 

RTL Nieuws reported here. 

This is the logo of DII.

DII  is a NGO and was founded end of 2009 by journalists and volunters. Objective was to provide independant news on the Donetsk region.

Donbass Public TV is a project by DII. One of the strategic partners of DII is Hromadske.tv. Hromadske.tv is another NGO but  based in Kiev.

Below the logo of Donbass Public TV. It is very similar to the DII logo.

Around March 2014 DII started Donbass Public TV.  European Endowment for Democracy (EED)  helped the “Donetsk Institute for Information” launch the TV.

The video was placed in the late afternoon of June 28 2017 at the Facebook page of Donetsk Public TV.

I am not aware of other locations where the video has been published.