The Ukrainian government accused the rebels of deliberately holding up the train at the station. A statement from a government official said that the return of the victims has been delayed because ‘terrorists are blocking its exit’.
As they waited for the separatists to make up their minds, the grief of the families turned to anger. In news broadcasts some of them called on President Putin ‘to please send our children home.’ In a statement on Russian television Putin said that it was essential to give international experts security to conduct an investigation. In his reaction Tony Abbott let his countrymen know that his government was doing all it could under the circumstances: ‘It’s absolutely imperative that we bring them home, but in order to bring them home we’ve got to first get them out. So that is what all of our energies and efforts are directed to. We want to retrieve the bodies, we want to investigate the site, and we want to punish the guilty. That’s what we want to do.’
The Dutch National Forensic Investigation Team (LTFO) led by Peter van Vliet finally gained access to the crash site on Monday 21 July as part of the deal the Malaysians had succeeded in negotiating. The team, made up of two Dutch forensic investigators, a guard and Alexander Hug of the OSCE, stumbled across remains that had not yet been removed, and they also inspected the luggage of the perished passengers. The forensics team realised that the site had been contaminated as soon as the villagers and separatists started rummaging through the area, but these experienced professionals also knew that this by no means meant it would be impossible for the Dutch Safety Board to piece together what happened at a later stage.
They did not have sufficient time for any kind of methodical examination of the area before they were hurried away by separatists after the sounds of exploding shells were heard close by. When the rebels told them to leave, van Vliet certainly didn’t even contemplate disobeying their orders: ‘When a separatist, smelling of alcohol and waving an AK-47 from his clapped-out Hyundai, tells me not to go somewhere, I’m not going there.’
The members of the OSCE and the Dutch forensic team were then taken to Torez. The team had been given clearance by the separatists to inspect the storage of the bodies in the refrigerated railcars and to confirm that the remains could be transported adequately to Kharkiv. Before boarding the train, van Vliet and the other forensic experts stood for a moment, their heads bowed and their hands clasped in a show of respect to the dead, then they donned masks and latex gloves and climbed onto the train cars to inspect the bodies.
The victims’ luggage, as much of it as had so far been salvaged at the crash site, was piled in a heap on the railway platform. Against the decrepit grey locomotive, this colourful pile was a grim and very sad reminder of forever lost lives, hopes and dreams.
After the separatists refused to let the train depart, van Vliet could do nothing but wait at Torez. Until now he had not been asked to sign any clearance forms and he was thankful for that. He had been given specific orders by the Dutch government not to sign anything that came to him from the separatists. Putting his signature on a separatist statement might be seen as an acknowledgement of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Dutch certainly did not want to give any such impression. So he waited, contemplating how he would handle the situation if the men guarding the remains insisted on a signature.
The bodies had now been exposed to hot summer conditions for four days and were steadily deteriorating; the smell of decay around the makeshift morgue train was becoming almost unbearable. There were reports that the refrigeration in the carriages had not been working consistently. Finally, on 22 July, the separatists let the train go.
But before they were willing to part with the train and its precious cargo, Peter van Vliet, to his great dismay, was asked to sign a number of documents in different languages. It was the Donetsk People’s Republic’s self-appointed minister of transport himself who entered the carriage waving a pile of documents. As van Vliet contemplated what to do, he suddenly found himself looking down the barrel of a Kalashnikov.
Tired from the long and strenuous days, van Vliet still hesitated as the Uzi-waving separatists became visibly ever more frustrated. Impatient and angered at being kept waiting, the smell of death overwhelming in the muggy heat, the minister of transport waved the papers in his face. On the spur of the moment van Vliet decided to sign them. But under each signature he carefully wrote in Dutch: ‘With this signature the Dutch in no way acknowledge the Donetsk People’s Republic.’
Hoping the separatists would not be able to read his native tongue, van Vliet felt he had done the only thing he could, considering the circumstances. He told journalists that he was impressed by the work the recovery crews had done, given the heat and the scale of the crash site. ‘I think they did a hell of a job in a hell of a place,’ he said.
Silene Fredriksz-Hoogzand and Rob Fredriksz had lost their only son, Bryce (twenty-three), and his girlfriend, Daisy Oehlers (twenty), in the crash. The young couple had been on their way to a holiday in Malaysia, the trip being a present from Bryce’s parents after a difficult year for the pair: Daisy’s mother had died and as a result Daisy had failed her exams. A friend phoned Rob Fredriksz in the late afternoon of 17 July asking if he had dropped his son and girlfriend off at the airport. Silene and Rob had not slept since. In a Sky News broadcast the grieving parents addressed Putin personally: ‘Please send my children home. Let them go to the Netherlands. I want my children back. We want to be able to bury or cremate them. We are sitting here waiting for them to return.’ The images of the grief-stricken couple and their heart-rending plea were aired worldwide.
Urged by the Dutch forensics team and the leader of the OSCE team, Alexander Hug, who insisted that ‘this train must move today’, the separatists, after accepting Peter van Vliet’s signature, finally gave the all clear. The long, slow and sad journey home had started at last, four days after the victims had plunged to earth.
As the stench got worse by the minute, the separatists who had been guarding the train for almost three days appeared visibly relieved to finally see it go. Walking alongside the makeshift morgue, clutching their automatic rifles as the train rattled into motion and chugged away, the separatists escorted the train out of the station. It would take twelve hours to reach Kharkiv, but the train was due to stop overnight in Donetsk, fifty kilometres west of the crash site.
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte held a news conference to announce that the locomotive with its body bags on board was on its way to rebel-held Donetsk and would then travel to Kharkiv, which was in Ukrainian government hands. From there the bodies would be taken back to the Netherlands to be identified.
But fighting had flared again earlier that day in the separatist-held city of Donetsk. City authorities reported battles were taking place near the town’s airport and warned residents to stay inside. Dutch forensic investigators feared that they would be held up again and would not be able to pass through the rebel stronghold. Much to everyone’s relief the train stopped overnight in a relatively calm Donetsk before leaving for the government-held city of Kharkiv at about 3am.
All the efforts of the countries that had lost citizens in the disaster were now aimed at transporting the victims out of the war-torn badlands. On 22 July the train carrying the remains of the MH17 victims finally arrived in Ukraine-controlled territory.