Friday, April 24, 2015

HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER: AN ANTHROPOLOGIST AND PATHOLOGIST DUTCH PROFESSOR FIRED FOR “EXPOSING PHOTOS OF MH17 VICTIMS”

















APRIL 24, 2015

The western version

THE HAGUE, Netherland

An anthropologist and pathologist who is part of the international team working to identify people killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was brought down in Ukraine was publicly rebuked Thursday for discussing the case and showing photos of victims in a lecture to students.

Arie de Bruijn, head of the Dutch police forensics unit that is leading the international identification team, criticized Prof. George Maat for making comments that de Bruijn said were "speculative, untrue and partly outside his area of expertise."

De Bruijn called Maat's comments "extremely serious" and apologized if they had offended relatives of the dead. He said that experts who are part of the team are allowed to share certain information with colleagues, but a recent lecture by Maat was open to people other than only medical students.

De Bruijn said it was "unacceptable" that Maat showed students confidential images during the lecture. The images included photos of body parts of victims.
Maat said in a statement he regretted it if he had upset next of kin.

He said he had given a number of lectures to students of medicine and forensic science and did not realize that people other than students also had attended.

Forensic experts are still working to identify remains of the 298 people killed when flight MH17 was brought down last July 17. Only two victims remain unaccounted-for. The Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed.

A team of investigators is in Ukraine this week collecting wreckage, personal belongings and human remains from the crash site. The team leader says he hopes that remains of the last two victims can be recovered.

An international team is investigating the exact cause of the downing, widely believed to be a surface-to-air missile, and Dutch police are running a criminal investigation in an effort to bring to justice those responsible for the crash.

Source: cbsnews.com

We agree that this very inappropriate thing to do for this “expert” professor.  This is a very sensitive investigation and it has not been concluded yet.  If he was any type of expert he should have known to be much more careful.  With these people unfortunately, ego comes first… always.


The Russian version

A senior Dutch forensic expert involved into the investigation of the MH17 plane crash has been dismissed, with further sanctions against him considered after he showed images of plane crash victims to his students.

Professor George Maat, who was involved in MH17 victim identification “has been suspended from his work and we'll see if other measures need to be taken," Thomas Aling, spokesman for the Dutch national forensics investigation team LTFO, told AFP on Thursday. He added that the expert was apparently fired for showing “photos that cannot be shown at a public meeting.” 

The photos exposure became “shameful and very shocking for victims' relatives, this adds to the grief,” said the deputy head of the MH17 Air Disaster Association, Evert van Zijtveld. 

Maas would possibly not have been incriminated in disclosing the photos if the lecture that took place in early April for an audience of about 150 people had been students-only, AFP reports. But an announcement on Facebook page clearly said the lecture was open to the public. 

“It appears that other people were there, I hadn't realized,” Maat said he said in a statement released by the police. “I'm very sorry to have hurt or distressed victims' loved ones,” he said, claiming he believed the lecture was restricted solely to medical students. 

Wie is de 'lekkende professor' George Maat? http://t.co/DR29Ggjnku #MH17 #georgemaatpic.twitter.com/GbVUxOxCKu
— NPO Wetenschap (@NPOWetenschap) April 23, 2015
 
“The collaboration with George Maat has been terminated,” Justice Minister Ard van der Steur later informed lawmakers. 

Maat’s showing of disturbing photos to medical students was first exposed by journalists of the private television channel RTL Nieuws. During the lecture organized by a medical students’ association, the anthropology professor used the photos of victims and body parts as dramatic example of how the identification process is organized. 

Van der Steur denounced the lecture at Leiden University, in the southern Netherlands city of Maastricht, as “completely inappropriate and in bad taste.”
Ailing noted that during the lecture Maat had made comments on issues he does not specialize in, specifically on what caused the MH17 to crash, which according to the spokesman is “incorrect.” 

The Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board. Due to the fact that most of the passengers aboard MH17 were Dutch, the Netherlands was charged with leading the investigation. 

The incident became an instant controversy, with Kiev and its Western backers having accused eastern Ukrainian rebel forces and Russia of being behind the downing.

This text is missing 3 very interesting features that were in the story of prof. Maat.
He told:
1) MH17 was hit by a rocket
2) There was a second person on board wearing an oxygencap
3) All bodies were found closely together, so not spread over a wide area, AND the part of the plane where the passengers were went down aproximately as one piece.

What conclusions can be drawn from this!
1) No BUK involved
2) just the cockpit was being shot at, with a rocket (and cannon bullets)

Why they doesn't the investigating team not publish this information? Because it would alarm certain suspects and that is not in the interest of the investigation team, who have to do a lot of research in the Ukraine.
Since Russia already released the information they had, the investigation team actually blamed Ukraine: at least that is what I read from the offical Dutch press release.

Source: http://rt.com