For nearly a week, their bodies lay scattered and ill-treated on an open plain in eastern Ukraine in a macabre geopolitical purgatory that left them little more than bargaining chips in the most bitter stand-off between the west and Russia since the Cold War.
But on Wednesday, the remains of those who died aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 began returning to the country from where they began their final living journey, arriving at a Dutch air base in the southern town of Eindhoven aboard two military transport planes.
Under clear skies, the Australian C-17 and Dutch C-130 pierced the silence and taxied to a darkened hangar where a thousand relatives and friends of the dead, joined by the Dutch royal family and top government officials, awaited their homecoming far from the glaring eyes of the world’s media.
After a bugle signalled a minute of silence, the only sound coming from the snap of military flags pulling against their poles, Dutch soldiers began unloading the 24 bodies from the Australian aircraft and the 16 from its smaller Dutch counterpart into 40 separate hearses, which formed a long line next to the planes.
After days of uncertainty and reports of looting at the crash site, anger mixed with anguish among the Dutch nationals who came to pay respects to their 193 fellow countrymen, the largest contingent of 298 killed aboard MH17.
“We are angry, we are frustrated,” said Nicole Van Gervan, 21, as she placed a bouquet of flowers under a Dutch air force plane at the entrance of the military base. “We don’t know what happened, why were our people killed, why? We don’t understand.”
The bodies will be taken for identification to a military base in Hilversum, a process that Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said could take weeks or even months.
Dutch government officials said that more bodies will be arriving the coming days and a similarly dignified ceremony will be performed for all victims.
“It’s difficult to give an exact timeline but most bodies should be here by the end of next week,” said a justice ministry official.
