Recent information published by the Dutch media NRC, reveals that one of the main prosecutors in the MH17 trial, Ward Ferdinandusse, is involved in the imprisonment of an innocent man in Argentina. After spending eight years in prison before being cleared by the court, which discovered that there was no evidence against him, this man is now seeking reparation, revealing in the process the somewhat special methods of prosecutor Ferdinandusse.

The more time passes and the more information concerning both the trial of MH17 and those responsible for conducting it shows that there is a serious problem in the methods used. The use as “evidence” of obviously unoriginal and doctored photos and videos, of wiretaps doctored by the SBU, or of anonymous witnesses, had already largely discredited the MH17 trial, which is more media and political than legal.

But the information published by NRC (which cannot be described as a Kremlin mouthpiece) shows that the use of dubious methods is not peculiar to this trial, but seems to be the trademark of some of the prosecutors in charge of it!

Back to the past. From 1976 to 1983, the military dictatorship in Argentina sowed terror, arrested opponents, and threw them into the ocean from planes to execute them. These are called the “death flights“.

In 2006, pilot Jeroen Engelkes, who works for Transavia, reported that colleagues told him (this is total hearsay) that an Argentinian-Dutch pilot named Julio Poch had defended the Argentinean junta’s “death flights” during a dinner in Bali in 2003. On the basis of this simple hearsay (which in a normal justice system has absolutely no legal value), the legal machine will be set in motion against Julio Poch.

After all, if someone says that someone else reported that he defended the “death flights” maybe he also threw people into the sea.

In 2008, Ward Ferdinandusse, who had graduated in international criminal law just three years earlier, therefore left with Dutch police officers for five days in Argentina to start an investigation. As no pilot who had flown death flights could be brought to justice, the Argentinians were very interested in the case of former Argentinean Navy pilot Julio Poch, and therefore in their Dutch visitors.

But at that stage the Argentinians had no criminal record on Poch and the Netherlands had not investigated his background either. So Argentina and the Netherlands decided to investigate and later decide which country would be best placed to handle the case.

In the same year, the investigating judge Sergio Torres travelled to the Netherlands because Argentina wanted Poch extradited. I would remind you that at this stage the two countries have absolutely nothing to seriously accuse Julio Poch with apart from the hearsay reported by a colleague!

This did not seem to pose a problem of conscience to Ferdinandusse, when he proposed a ruse to get round the problem posed by the fact that the extradition treaty between the Netherlands and Argentina does not provide for the extradition of its own nationals.

Ferdinandusse then proposed to the Argentinians to have Poch arrested in another country from where he would be extradited to Argentina, requesting information on his movements via a request for legal assistance in the Netherlands!

While there is nothing conclusive against Julio Poch, nothing to justify his arrest, Ferdinandusse gives Argentina a procedural trick to get him arrested and extradited. The Dutch prosecutor does not seem to have been shocked to provide enough to send to prison a man accused on the basis of mere hearsay!

His hierarchy seems to have had more scruples than the young prosecutor. Indeed, in 2009, the Ministry of Justice and the head of the public prosecutor’s office decided that the Netherlands could not give Argentina information on the flights where Poch is. For them this would amount to a disguised extradition.

But Ferdinandusse didn’t give up. A few months later, he wrote a memorandum whose arguments (which he refused to reveal by hiding behind his duty of secrecy, how convenient it is) seemed to have convinced his hierarchy to go beyond the law!

It was prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer (who is also currently prosecutor in the MH17 trial, how strange is this), who replied to Ferdinandusse, saying that they had finally agreed to pass on the information on Poch’s movements.

This decision will have serious consequences for Julio Poch. While on his last flight before retirement, he is stopped at Valencia airport in Spain, thanks to information provided to Buenos Aires. Spain then handed him over to Argentina, where he spent eight years in prison before being unanimously acquitted by three judges in November 2017. There was no evidence against him linking him to the “death flights”. None at all!!!

For the past three years, Julio Poch has been fighting to obtain 5 million euros in damages and an apology from the Dutch state for this disguised extradition, which cost him eight years of his life in a prison in Argentina when there was nothing conclusive against him.

An extradition made possible by the prosecutor Ferdinandusse, who did not hesitate to propose a ruse to circumvent the law in order to extradite to Argentina a man whom nothing serious was accusing except the hearsay of a colleague! This is one of the main prosecutors in the MH17 trial: a man who did not hesitate to send another one to prison in Argentina for eight years without any evidence to justify such a violation of his rights! All this to finally have a pilot of the “death flights” brought to justice!

It is difficult not to draw a parallel with the MH17 trial, where there is more of a feeling of a desire to have a culprit at all costs, even if it means condemning innocent people, than a real search for the truth. If this is what the Netherlands wants (a show trial rather than a fair trial), then it is clear that Prosecutor Ferdinandusse was the perfect man to investigate the case.

Christelle Néant