AutoMaidan activist Oleksandr Kravtsovs, held in pre-trial detention since Jan. 23 after his arrest two days earlier, is going home. But he remains under house arrest and still faces charges of beating riot control police officers and hooliganism in the EuroMaidan protests, allegations that he denies.
On Feb. 5, the Solomyansky Kyiv Court of Appeals released him from pre-trial detention in a closely watched case by human rights activists.
“I can finally give him back his wedding ring and he can taste the cake our elder daughter prepared hoping he would come back home today,” said his wife, Olesya Mamchych, a Ukrainian poet. “I didn’t hope, but somehow the fortune turned its face on us.”
Kravtsov’s case was one of more than five similar cases heard in Kyiv Solomyanskyi Appeal Court on Feb. 5. Most of them got postponed until Feb. 13.
But his wife notes that her husband “is still under the investigation and so the fight is not over.”
Kravtsov left home at 4 a.m. in the morning on Jan. 23 with three other friends and AutoMaidan activists to help others in the group who have been staging car caravan protests outside the luxury homes of Ukrainian officials.
But it turned out that authorities had set a trap for him.
“They have some Internet communication channels among AutoMaidan activists. That’s how he got the alarm that appeared to be a trap,” Mamchych says.
Kravtsov’s car, a blue Lanos, was stopped by a road police officer on Hrushevskoho Street. His friends say riot police officers smashed car windows with AutoMaidan activists still inside and dragged the activists out of the vehicle.
Police rounded up the group and took them to Mariinsky Park.
AutoMaidan press secretary Kateryna Butko was freed, while Kravtsov and two other men were forced by police to take off their coats and stand on their knees in the snow for another hour before taken into custody.
They were trying to find out how much do we get paid and who pays us, some were trying to make us say ‘Glory to Berkut’ and beating us on the legs and backs of course,” says Serhii Zelinskyi, Kravtsov’s friend, who was also present in the car that night.
Police cracked two of Zelinsky’s ribs and he got sick with pneumonia. He and another Kravtsov’s friend were released later in the morning, but declared as witnesses. Kravtsov was detained.
The court on Jan. 25 ruled that it had found probable cause that he committed the crimes and ordered him held in pre-trial detention.
Public access to the court proceedings on Feb. 5 was limited to 30 people.
Kravtsov is obliged to stay at home from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. until March 23. He was not allowed to appear in court, but allowed a video link to the proceedings.
His wife, Mamchych, said the family is not going to give up.
“I filed a counter lawsuit with the prosecutors’ office about the beating of my husband and the vandalism to our car, but got not reply and will go to the European Court of Human Rights if needed,” Mamchych said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].
