ODESA – Ukraine's law enforcement agencies continue to neglect, and sometimes even sabotage, the investigation into the events that occurred in Odesa, on May 2, 2014, in which 48 people were killed and over 200 were injured, members of the May 2 Group, which comprises journalists and experts conducting heir own investigation into the events, said.
Serhiy Dibrov, a member of the May 2 Group, says the Directorate for Special Investigations of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has not begun working on the case on May 2, and therefore, all mistakes and problems detected by various international experts, including the Council of Europe Consultative Group, have remained uncorrected.
“The law enforcement agencies have done very little to determine what occurred and why it occurred, I am not even speaking about finding and punishing the culprits […] We see clear signs of sabotage, we see that the expert evaluation ordered in April has not been completed yet, that the case is falling apart in court, that there are no prospects of criminal prosecution for those who are now in custody,” Dibrov said in Kyiv on Thursday.
Volodymyr Sarkisyan, a member of the group, said the investigative bodies never reported to the public on the course of the investigation in the past 1.5 years.
As a result, representatives of the May 2 Group believe all the cases opened on the basis of the May 2 events may not have any prospects in court, none of the defendants in this case will be found guilty, and those who will be found guilty may contest these decisions in the European Court of Human Rights, because numerous procedural violations have already been registered in the investigation.
In November 2015, the international consultative group supervising the investigation into the events that occurred in Odesa on May 2, 2014 issued a report calling the investigation into the tragedy conducted by the relevant Ukrainian authorities ineffective.
According to earlier reports, 48 people were killed, and over 200 were injured, in the riots that occurred in Odesa on May 2, 2014. Most of the victims were killed in the Union House. Investigations determined that the riots in Odesa had been organized and planned. The Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have instituted about a dozen criminal proceedings on the basis of the events.
Judicial investigations are currently being conducted into at least four criminal cases against suspects in the crimes committed in Odesa on May 2, 2014.
The Verkhovna Rada and the Odesa region’s council have initiated their own investigations into the May 2, 2014 events. However, the investigation conducted by the Verkhovna Rada led to a general conclusion that the tragedy was caused by the lack of action by the law enforcement agencies, and the Odesa region’s council interrupted its investigation and disbanded the parliamentary group that worked on it because it could not receive the needed information from the law enforcement agencies.
The so-called May 2 Group, which is comprised of journalists, activists, and some experts, is also conducting its own investigation. This group has now published the most complete and detained information on the May 2 events and the circumstances that led to them, including the chronology of the events and various expert evaluations. Members of the group also defended in court the right of society to publish information relating to investigations into the May 2 events that the investigative bodies did not want to make public.
