"Industrial-scale" falsification of evidence at the crash site of MH17 - Australia

Evidence was tampered with on an "industrial scale" at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Tuesday, calling it a "cover-up".

Abbott, whose government voted unanimously for a UN Security Council resolution this Monday calling for full access to rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine, acknowledged progress but said much more needed to be done.

"There is still a long, long way to go," he said at a press conference to find and repatriate the bodies of dead Australians and bring those responsible for the 298 killed to justice.

"After the crime is covered up," he added.

"What we saw was evidence of industrial scale falsification. This has to stop.”

His comments came when the pro-Russian separatists accused of crashing the plane finally gave in to fierce international demands to hand over the bodies and black boxes of the plane, which will be handed over to international investigators.

This followed days of bitter bickering in which the rebels prevented experts from gaining access to the site and were accused of tampering with evidence.

"This place was trampled from the beginning, and we only saw all kinds of random people wandering around the place, digging in the ruins, sorting out the wreckage. We saw heavy equipment driving over the crash site," Abbott said.

"The more recent video suggests that this is more like a construction demolition. And this is again unacceptable."

He said that the crash site should be reliably protected and suggested that it should be done by the countries whose citizens were killed in the disaster.

"Obviously, there should be security for the place [of the crash], and I would believe that security for the place would be best provided by the countries that were so offended here," he said.

In recent days, Abbott has been particularly scathing in his criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for refusing to intervene, but admitted that he now appeared to be acting after intense international pressure.

"The opinion I expressed 24 hours ago is that President Putin said all the right things. I then continued, the problem is to keep the ego from fulfilling its words," he said.

"And to President Putin's credit, he was as good as his word so far. I give him credit for being as good as his word for the last 24 hours."

A train carrying the remains of 280 people killed in the disaster was finally allowed to leave a rebel-held area in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, as fighters declared a truce around the crash site.

The bodies must be in the Ukrainian government-controlled city of Kharkov before they are placed on planes, including an Australian C-17 Globemaster, to the Netherlands, from where the doomed flight to Kuala Lumpur took off.

Abbott said the "painful and methodical process" of identifying the victims would take up the week, a process he acknowledged would be sad but important to sort out.

"It would be terrible to unite the grief of families by risking to mistakenly identify their loved ones," he said, adding that Australia's Operation Homecoming is being coordinated from Ukraine by the former head of the Defense Forces, Angus Houston.

Source: news.yahoo.com