As well as journalists, there
were many residents of Zaporizhya who’d come to express their support
for the three men. The courtroom couldn’t fit them all.
Today’s verdict was a test for the judges involved – one that they failed. None of this unfortunately, was unexpected.
The
verdict will be appealed and all legal avenues exhausted in Ukraine.
Then, if necessary, justice will be sought – and found – at the European
Court of Human Rights
Today’s judgement is profoundly frustrating
in part because the Court in Strasbourg’s position does not need to be
guessed. It was clearly articulated in the case of Zamferesko v.
Ukraine from 15 November 2012. Since Viktor Zamferesko’s “confession”
had been beaten out of him, ““the use of this confession to
obtain the applicant’s conviction automatically rendered the whole
criminal proceedings against him unfair.” (71).
Three men were
convicted today of a crime where the only evidence is their multiple
and contradictory “confessions” which all have retracted and have said
were obtained through physical and psychological pressure. Two
authorized forensic psychologists have confirmed that the men were
placed under severe psychological pressure during the formal
interrogations and investigative activities
Other grounds for serious concern about the seven confessions which have been used to justify 14 and 15-year prison sentences can be found here and in the other material listed.
Formal
complaints about the “defence lawyers” called in to be present and sign
protocols during the first night interrogations were upheld by the
relevant qualification commission which reprimanded one lawyer and
stripped two others of their right to practise for six months. During
those critical days the men were thus effectively denied legal defence.
All
other formal complaints have been bounced back and forth between
different government bodies, the Human Rights Ombudsperson and
parliamentarians. The European Convention obliges member states to
ensure effective investigation into all allegations of torture.
There
has been no such investigation and Judge Minasov has consistently
ignored or blocked all applications from the defence. These included
the obvious wish to question all forensic psychologists after the third
assessment which he initiated denied the pressure identified so clearly
in the first two assessments and instead spoke of the men’s “leaning to
crime”.. Minasov rejected the application, while focusing on the third
assessment in his verdict. He was equally unperturbed by the
prosecution’s amendment, two years into the trial, of the indictment
removing, among other things, the time frame which gave all three an
unbreakable alibi.
Even in a country whose law enforcement bodies
are notorious for forcing “confessions” and where the acquittal rate has
plummeted to 0.2 % of all court verdicts, the irregularities in this
case are staggering.
In an appeal
signed by a number of former political prisoners, lawyers, journalists
and concerned members of the public, we asked representatives of the European Union
to raise this issue with Ukraine’s leaders given the very serious
concerns over this case, and the destructive effect on Ukrainian society
of any trial whose outcome is widely seen as connected with factors
unrelated to the guilt or innocence of the defendants. The fact that
the prosecutor and judge have stubbornly insisted on such a verdict
confirms fears that the assurances given President Yanukovych on
television by the then interior minister that the culprits had been
found have been deemed to outweigh the cause of justice.
They do not.
Halya Coynash is a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. The article was first published here.
