'Give them up': Message to Putin after three found guilty of murdering 298 people on board MH17

Barry Sweeney, whose son Liam was on the flight, said the men should be handed over. Credit: ITV Tyne Tees

The father of one of the victims on board flight MH17 has called on Putin to hand over the men found guilty of murdering the 298 people killed when it was shot down.

Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Leonid Kharchenko were found to have been responsible for shooting down the Malaysian Airline flight on 17 July 2014.

A fourth man - Oleg Pulatov - who was the only one of the four to have legal representation in court, was acquitted.

None of the men attended the District Court of the Hague's hearing near Schiphol in the Netherlands.

Russians Girkin and Dubinskiy and Ukrainian Kharchenko, who are linked to a Donetsk-based Russian separatist group, were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Barry Sweeney, whose son Liam was on the flight, said the men should be handed over.

He has been fighting for justice for the eight years since the flight was shot down.

In a message to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Mr Sweeney said: "They've done it, they've been found guilty and they should be brought to justice. Even though they have been they are still free people as long as they stay there."

He added: "I feel as though because they are not going to jail, they are getting away with it."

Reflecting on a long eight years and four months, he said: "I've come out feeling a bit lost. I've not had any proper thoughts about it because I'll have to digest it and think about it

"I don't think we could have expected anything else but we had to be here in person to see what was going to happen."

Liam Sweeney, 28, from Newcastle was on board the flight with John Alder, 63, from Gateshead.

The Newcastle United fans were on their way to New Zealand to watch their team play a pre-season tour.

They were among the 298 people - everyone on board the flight - killed when a missile exploded near the cockpit, causing the plane to break-up midair.

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