'​Western media blaming Russia for MH17 crash is kangaroo court'

Within a few hours of the Malaysian plane crash, Western journalists and politicians had made up their minds that Russia was responsible, but they are not investigators, Marcus Papadopoulos, editor of a UK political magazine Politics First, told RT.

RT:The Ukrainian president says there are 'many radars and satellites' monitoring the skies over Ukraine and the State Department did allude to some other evidence it has. Yet, Russia is the only country to unveil its radar readings. Why don't others do the same?

Marcus Papadopoulos: It is absolutely imperative that the human dimension to this terrible tragedy is not forgotten or sidelined or politicized, because what happened last Thursday with the Malaysian airline crash was an appalling and heartbreaking tragedy. I really fear that the way a lot of Western journalists have been covering this terrible event has been a PR offensive against Russia. But certainly Russia has made its evidence public. The Ukrainian government claims to have satellite and radar information. However, it’s not making it public. The Russian government is under a tremendous amount of pressure. Globally speaking, Western media still has the balance in its favor. There have been a lot of attacks on the Russian government in the last few days. So this is on the Russian government to try and counter those claims, and it does have to be said that a lot of those claims coming from Western journalists are very dubious.

RT:The US, the UK and other Western powers seem to have already decided who's guilty. Can a truly independent investigation proceed in these conditions?

MP: That's the $64,000 Question. Western journalists and politicians are not crash investigators. You cannot determine how a plane was brought out of the sky within a few hours, and that's what we saw last Thursday. Within a few hours Western journalists and Western politicians made up their minds that Russia was responsible. That is not the way that an air crash investigation is carried out. That is not the way that a court of law would approach the matter. Certainly in England which has the finest legal system in the world they would not tolerate that sort of behavior, they would be very dubious about these claims. You have to have an impartial thorough investigation carried out by experts and Western journalists are not aircraft crash investigators.

RT:The US State Department blames anti-government rebels and Russia citing evidence like social media posts. Is that sufficient in a case like this?

MP: No, it’s not sufficient, because we all know that anyone can set up a pseudonym account on Twitter. We have to allow the air crash investigators to investigate what happened. On Monday, there was a positive development when the black boxes were handed over to Malaysian authorities. But I would stress that the world needs to be very cautious when it comes to what the American government and journalists claim, because there is a litany of errors which they reported over the last 20 years. Let's not forget, American media ran stories about how Iraqi soldiers were throwing babies out of hospital windows - absolutely false; they spoke of how half a million Kosovo Albanians were murdered by the Serbs – absolutely false; they spoke about how Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - absolutely false. They are doing the same sort of thing now with Ukraine. They have a very checkered history in the American government and American media sector, and we need to be extremely cautious with the way they are covering a terrible tragedy, a terrible loss of life.

If they [US State Department] do have this evidence - concrete evidence, plausible evidence - let’s see, let’s examine it like a court of law would.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.