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Dutch prosecutors launch war-crimes probe into Flight MH17

Dutch prosecutors launched a war-crimes probe into the midair attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, officials said Monday.

A Dutch prosecutor has already arrived in Ukraine, gathering evidence in a potential trial of terrorists who brought down the civilian airliner last week.

The Netherlands is invoking the Law on International Crimes, which would allow the country to prosecute any individual suspected of committing a war crime against a Dutch citizen.

Flight MH17 was shot out of the air above eastern Ukraine on Thursday, killing all 298 people aboard — 193 of whom were Dutch citizens.

The Netherlands has a long history of pursuing mankind’s worst criminals. The International Court of Justice is based in The Hague, which has played host to some of the most famous war-crimes trials in world history.

Serbian butcher Slobodan Milošević was being tried in The Hague for his war crimes in the former Yugoslavia when he died in 2000 before the case was finished.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the attack on Flight MH17 should be viewed on a par with 9/11 and the 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

“I don’t see any differences from the tragedy 9/11, from the tragedy of Lockerbie and from the tragedy of Grabovo,” the city where Flight 17 crashed, Poroshenko told CNN on Monday.

“This is a danger for the whole world, this is a danger for the global security. This is not just … some conflict inside Ukraine.”