3 men sentenced to life in prison for shooting down flight MH17 that killed 298

A Dutch court on Thursday sentenced three men to life imprisonment for their role in shooting down Malaysia Airlines passenger jet MH17 over Ukraine in 2014.

The District Court in The Hague found former Russian intelligence agents Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Ukrainian separatist leader Leonid Kharchenko guilty of the murder of 298 people onboard flight MH17, which was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile when it was flying over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

A third Russian national, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted.

The three convicted men were also ordered to pay at least 16 million euros ($16.5 million) in compensation to relatives of the victims.

However, the men remain fugitives. They are all believed to be in Russia, which will not extradite them.

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