The Special Investigations Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) of Ukraine has notified about change in previously announced suspicions and about new suspicions regarding crimes committed between February 18 and 20 in 2014 against protesters on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, brought against ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and his allies, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said.
Lutsenko wrote on Facebook on Friday evening that new suspicions and amended ones brought against Yanukovych, ex-Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko, ex-Deputy Interior Minister of Ukraine Viktor Ratushniak, ex-chief of the SBU Security Service of Ukraine Oleksandr Yakymenko, ex-head of the SBU’s Anti-Terrorist Center Volodymyr Totsky, ex-head of the Interior Ministry’s Kyiv Directorate Petro Fedchuk. They are charged with organizing and committing a number of grave and especially grave crimes committed as an organized criminal group against protesters in the center of Kyiv.
In particular, Lutsenko wrote, the above-mentioned persons are suspected of illegally hampering the organization and holding of rallies, marches and demonstrations, excess of law enforcement officials’ powers, deliberate killings of two or more persons, an attempted murder of two or more persons, causing intentional grave bodily harm, as well as organizing an act of terrorism.
Their crimes fall under Part 3 of Article 28, Part 3 of Article 27, Articles 340 and 365 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (as in the Law of 07.04.2011), Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (as in the Law of 05.11.2009), Article 121 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (as in the Law of 05.11.2009), and Article 258 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
“Notification of the suspicions was handed over to the defenders of the former high-ranking officials and in the way stipulated in the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine,” the Prosecutor General’s Office informed.
Lutsenko also said that “behind these dry lines is the titanic work of not only investigators and prosecutors, but also volunteers.” “Therefore, today, I’m pleased to give on behalf of the President a state award to Evelina Nefertari, who created a synchronized documented video recording of the shootings of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes and other crimes against peaceful demonstrators,” Lutsenko wrote.
