Dutch prosecutors demanded life in prison for the four suspects involved in the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine that killed the 298 passengers and crew on board in 2014.

The prosecution said the four suspects used a Russian Buk missile recklessly to bring down the plane, arguing that life sentences, which are rarely doled out in the Netherlands, were justified in light of the “deep and irreversible suffering” inflicted on the families of the victims.

Those accused include three Russians — Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky, and Oleg Pulatov — and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, who were allegedly separatists fighting the Ukrainian government in 2014. Their goal was to bring down Ukrainian planes using a Russian missile system, prosecutors said. They were expecting to bring down military planes rather than a civilian flight.

The case is being tried in the Netherlands because the majority of those killed were Dutch passengers, though the victims came from 16 different countries.

COUPLE ARRESTED IN NETHERLANDS AFTER ESCAPING COVID-QUARANTINE HOSPITAL

Public prosecutor Manon Ridderbeks told the court she felt the sentences were necessary because of the nature of the crime.

“It must send an unequivocal international message that aviation deserves the greatest possible protection and that gross acts of violence against it will be punished severely,” Ridderbeks said, according to the Associated Press.

The prosecution added that it did not matter that the suspects were intending to bring down a military plane because as civilians, they lacked the authority to bring the plane down.

Family members of the victims said the sentence demand was progress but that justice was a long way off given how long it would take for a verdict to come in.

“We just started coming in the right direction ... but the outcome will be in the future,” Anton Kotte, who lost his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson on the flight, told the outlet.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The defense team will be making its case in March. A verdict is not expected until September 2022 at the earliest.