- Charred picture of Mabel Anthonysamy Soosai, 45, killed alongside husband and son, nine, found lying in Ukrainian field nine months later
- Family express anger that the site has not yet been cleared and Mabel’s passport picture sits alongside personal possessions of the 298 who died
- Site is in pro-Russian held territory and access to the site has been difficult for investigators because of fierce fighting
- Relative told MailOnline: ‘It is time now to stop the obstruction of this site, and for President Putin and his supporters to come clean’
Almost nine months after the passenger jet was shot out of the sky by a missile, the ‘smell of death still hangs over’ this bleak area of eastern Ukraine, with personal belongings of victims and possibly crucial evidence among still unsifted debris of the doomed Boeing 777.
Some 800 human fragments found recently at the site were sent to The Netherlands on March 28, yet following MailOnline’s visit to the site last week there are signs more are still to be recovered.
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Chilling: MailOnline’s photographer spotted the burned and torn passport of loving wife and mother Mabel Anthonysamy Soosai, 45, one of the 298 slaughtered when MH17 was downed over Ukraine on July 17, 2014. Her family in Kuala Lumpur has given MailOnline permission to publish the picture
Wiped out: Mabel was killed alongside husband Paul Rajasingam Sivagnanam, 52, a Shell IT executive, and son Matthew, aged nine
Locals in the village of Grabovo said a woman’s foot was spotted recently, yet investigators still do not have unfettered access to the crash site amid the uneasy ceasefire between the Ukrainians and the pro-Russian rebels.
Among the incinerated debris and mangled metal, our photographer spotted the burned and torn passport of a loving wife and mother who was one of the 298 slaughtered when the Malaysian Airlines aircraft was downed over rebel-held territory.
The charred travel document was identifiable as belonging to victim Mabel Anthonysamy Soosai, 45, a former university lecturer returning from Amsterdam to her native Malaysia with husband Paul Rajasingam Sivagnanam, 52, a Shell IT executive, and son Matthew, aged nine.
They were known to friends as the ‘ever-smiling family’ but they were mercilessly killed along with the rest of the 298 passengers and crew on the flight to Kuala Lumpur on July 17 last year.
Here in the dank mist-enveloped Ukrainian field, it is as if this tragic mother is pleading for sanity and justice after the investigation became mired in the fog of an ominous new Cold War.
‘It broke my heart to see the picture, her passport still in the debris of the plane,’ her brother Clement, 47, told MailOnline in Kuala Lumpur. ‘But thank you so much for finding it and telling us, Mabel’s family, about it.’
He was struck by the timing of her passport’s discovery, just after Easter – exactly a year on from a happy and memorable gathering at Mabel and Paul’s home for this devout Christian family.
‘I was thinking of her so much lately. She was in my thoughts every day as we marked Easter without her, and then you found this picture,’ he said, wiping tears from his eyes.
Haunting: Personal belongings of victims are still littered around the field – and possibly crucial evidence -because the crash scene hasn’t been cleared nine months after the Malaysian Airways flight came down
Grim: Alongside Mabel’s passport, many small parts from the plane – such as controllers for the in-flight entertainment systems – are visible among MH17’s charred detritus
Deeply personal: Sentimental belongings – such as this bracelet made of beads – lie on the charred ground
Thawed: As the snow melted after another harsh winter in the village of Grabovo, the ground gave up its ghosts of lives cut short and a continuing injustice
Plea: One of Mabel’s relatives told MailOnline that her picture ‘still out in the wind and rain’ along with the personal effects of other victims ‘reminds us it’s a human tragedy but the authorities seem to forget this’
Souvenir: A shot glass bought as a reminder of what should have been a fun trip lies on the ground
‘I saw her passport and thought: I miss you so much. But you know, she is smiling a little in the picture, just as she smiled so often. I guess she is trying to tell me something.
‘You know, it couldn’t have come at a better time. I hear her saying: “I’m smiling. I’m in good hands, and here is my picture, smiling”. It comforts me to a certain extent after what has happened.
‘So easily this picture could have been burned, or you might not have seen her face, or even destroyed altogether.
‘But no, somehow it survived and we receive it a year after our Easter together at her home when she was making cup cakes with all the children.’
He found pictures of Mabel at her last Easter, a happy family event when she also cooked chicken curry and ‘her famous cutlets’.
‘And now here she is smiling, at the very place where she passed away,’ he said.
Clement along with Paul’s brother Patrick flew to Amsterdam to collect the couple’s remains in August last year. A few weeks later, they went back again after Matthew’s body was belatedly identified .
He noticed another picture by our photographer Peter Shelomovskiy of the bedraggled sunflowers in the field after the annual snow melt.
They had heard, previously, about the sunflowers at the crash site and take enormous comfort from this.
‘I told my mum that Mabel passed away in a field of sunflowers. She adored sunflowers. And God took her away in the a field of sunflowers.’
English language university lecturer Mabel – a Chevening Award scholar who had taken her Masters degree at the University of Essex in Britain – had lived abroad in Switzerland but at the time of the crash, the family were resident back in Malaysia and she often saw her mother, Theresa, 73, after taking Matthew to school.
‘It is some comfort about the sunflowers, but my mother kept repeating: “Why has she died so young? She had so many things she wanted to do.”‘
Clement, an educational manager, voiced the family’s message for Mr Putin and the rebels as fears grow that Russia is concealing the identities of those who shot down MH17, almost certainly with a BUK missile from a rebel-held eastern Ukraine.
‘I feel whoever did this should face the consequences,’ he said. ‘What they did was wrong. Killing innocent people can never be justified.
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