The MH17 defense pleadings continues today. Defense is trying to add uncertainty to the prosecution findings that (1) the maximum range of a BUK is 36km, thus no Ukrainian launch site would have been possible, and (2) that all sites within this range were in militants' control.
Defense argues the maximum range is 45-55 km, and blames JIT for taking the Russia-provided maximum range of 36km "while in other cases JIT ignores Russian data" (hard to believe this comes from a lawyer - doctrine says to trust data that doesn't serve party providing it)
Defense tries to bring back Zaroschenske as a possible launch site because "2 out of 3 expert calculations did not calculate a launch site that overlaps with the JIT-accepted site" (A big stretch. The Belgian institute computed a range that is literally adjacent to launch site)
(and the "3rd" expert - the only one with the odd launch area - is Russia's state-owned Almaz Antey )
Interesting new line of defense: the militants "assumed the airspace is closed and thus didn't think they might shoot down a commercial plane". Per Dutch law, this would only be a mitigating, not exculpating factor
The Defense is now trying to cast doubt on the credibility of telephone GSM cell-tower metadata that pinpointed Pulatov's location during the time around the shoot-down. Interestingly, the Defense doesn't provide an alibi assertion as to where he *was*.
Next, Defense tries to argue (again) that the intercepted calls based on which JIT made its conclusions were pre-selected and thus may exclude other relevant calls. Interestingly, no assertion of non-authenticity of the call intercepts - Russia's key argument so far.
Defense mansplains the intricacies of the Russian language and how things may mean different things based on context, and wants to know how exactly the translators chose which synonyms to use in translating the phone intercepts.
In a move more worthy of @mfa_russia than a Dutch legal team, Defense now says that "even though we have no evidence the Ukrainian prosecutor was dismissed for corruption, there was much media speculation about the reasons for his dismissal so it's worth having a look into that"
