More than 10 EuroMaidan activists received subpoenas informing that police had started a criminal case about the offensive inscriptions made on the fence of the house that allegedly belongs to the Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko, reports EuroMaidan SOS Facebook group. The activists are qualified as witnesses in the case.
The inscriptions were made on Dec. 26 when a group of around 300 people protested next to the house in Kyiv Oblast which journalist Tetyana Chornovol reported to be Zakharchenko’s. Chornovol was beaten on her way home hours after she pubslished information about the house online.
Inscriptions on the fence read “Property of the bandits” and “Butcher lives here.”
“Someone in the Interior Ministry decided that the level of social danger of this action [is enough to consider it worth] criminal investigation,” reads the statement by EuroMaidan SOS Facebook group.
Activist Pavlo Kolomiets, 30, confirmed that he got a subpoena on Jan. 6 informing that he had to report to the police investigator about the inscriptions.
“Couple of days after the protest of Dec. 26, the policeman came to me, asking to go to the investigator in Obukhiv,” Kolomiets says. “I asked to send me an official subpoena”.
Kolomiets believes that he is not the only activist who was summoned by police.
Interior Ministry’s press service wasn’t available for comments.
According to lawyer Dmytro Yovdiy, qualifying inscriptions as an offense that demands a criminal investigation is “real absurd.”
According to Ukrainska Pravda, during the protest an uknown man appeared from behind the fence and tried to persuade the protesters that it wasn’t Zakharchenko’s house and asked activists to not damage the property.
