Washington: US Secretary of State John Kerry laid out “extraordinary circumstantial evidence” on Sunday that Ukrainian pro-Russian rebels were behind the downing of a Malaysian jet hit by weapons obtained from Russia.
“It's pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia in the hands of separatists,” Kerry told CNN as he blitzed the Sunday television talk shows. “We know with confidence, with confidence, that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point in time. So it obviously points a very clear finger at the separatists.”
Mr Kerry, a former prosecutor said, adding Washington had “extraordinary circumstantial evidence” although he stopped short of actually accusing them of firing a missile at the plane.
“We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We know where it came from. We know the timing.” “We also know, from voice identification, that the separatists were bragging about shooting it down afterwards.”
Mr Kerry also told CNN's State of the Union that “we know for certain that the separatists have a proficiency that they've gained by training from Russians as to how to use these sophisticated SA11 systems. We know they have the system.”
And “within hours of this event, this particular system passed through two towns right in the vicinity of the shootdown,” he said. Kerry added there was also video of an SA11 launcher being trucked back into Russia after the disaster, with “at least one missing missile.”
