Odesa - The prosecution in the court hearing against Adam Osmayev, who is suspected of masterminding an assassination attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, may lose a witness, namely the wife of one of the owners of apartments damaged by fire following a blast on Tyraspolska Street in Odesa on Jan. 4, 2012.
The woman, who has witness status, was present at a court hearing, although she had not been invited to it, at which a prosecutor read out her testimony given during the pretrial investigation.
Osmayev’s defense lawyer Olga Chertok drew the court’s attention to this fact, and Judge Viktor Pyslar, presiding the hearing, ruled to remove the witness from the courtroom and then announced that the court would later consider whether the witness should be disqualified.
Following the hearing, Chertok said also that the prosecutors failed to mention some documents in its indictment, which could influence the outcome of the trial.
In particular, the prosecution read out Osmayev’s testimony in which he admitted that he had drawn diagrams of explosive devices and described their components on sheets of paper found in an apartment on Jan. 4, 2012.
At the same time, the lawyer said the case file earlier included the conclusion of a graphology analysis of the drawings, according to which they had been done by Ilya Pyanzin, another suspect in the case, who has been extradited to Russia.
She also mentioned what she described as a selective approach toward the way documents were attached to the case file, which she plans to air at the next hearings.
