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JIT stated several times it would make public during a press conference the exact type of weapon which was used to shot down MH17 . However JIT at September 28 did not specify the exact weapon. Dutch Safety Board concluded in their final report that the missile must have been of a 9M38 series. That can be either the 9M38 or 9M38M1 missile.

JIT in a video showed a part of a BUK missile. The printed letters following 9M38 were blurred.

It would be logical that JIT would announce on September 28 the missile would be either a 9M38 or a 9M38M1 missile. Instead JIT repeated the conclusion of the DSB saying it was a 9M38 series missile.

So what could be the reason for JIT to not exactly specify the weapon?

I contacted the spokesman of JIT. He did not give a reason why the exact weapon was not made public. When I stated that exact cannot be ‘9M38 series’ he said “we can discuss the definition of the word exact”.

So JIT is not going to make this clear.

I believe the problem is in Finland. This week Dutch Telegraaf broke the news saying that Finland helped the Dutch police by executing BUK missile tests in Finland. Today it was announced that the results of those tests cannot be used by the Joint Investigation Team. The reason for this is likely a legal one. Finland made an agreement with the Dutch Police. However Joint Investigation Team is not Dutch police. The Dutch Police cannot just hand over the results of the missile explosion tests to JIT. It would break an agreement and probably harm the court case. Finnish government needs to give approval for this.

Investigation team leader Gerrit Thiry of JIT told Helsingin Sanomat, Finlands largest newspaper, that they “have not received permission from the Finnish Government to share the results with the international research team.”

Thiry also stated the results of the tests done in Finland could not be used in the information released by JIT on the press conference at September 28.

Probably because of the legal issues with Finland, JIT decided to execute missile explosion tests in Ukraine. Finland was probably prefered because Finland is neutral. Ukraine can be seen later in a court case as opponent to Russia. The so called arena test in Ukraine was done in July 2016. Very late in the investigation and the results could not be used to make public the exact type of weapon during the press conference.

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