The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (PGO) has sent a request to Bulgaria for extradition of Oleksiy Levin, who was detained there on suspicion of being involved in the attack on activist Kateryna Gandziuk.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine has sent a request for extradition,” the PGO’s press service told Interfax-Ukraine.
As reported, Bulgarian and Ukrainian law enforcement officers detained Oleksiy Moskalenko (Levin), who is wanted on suspicion of involvement in the attack on Gandziuk.
On July 31, 2018, an unidentified person doused Gandziuk with concentrated sulfuric acid near her house in Kherson. She was taken to Kyiv for hospital treatment and died on November 4, 2018.
Five suspects, including a man identified by a video surveillance camera as the buyer of the acid, were detained.
In February 2019, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky District Court extended until July 3 the terms of the pretrial investigation of Head of Kherson Regional Council Volodymyr Manher, Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) veteran Serhiy Torbin and Oleksiy Levin (Moskalenko) for committing a criminal offense stipulated under Part 3 of Article 27 (types of complicity), Paragraphs 4, 6, 11, 12 of Part 2 of Article 115 (premeditated murder) of Ukraine’s Criminal Code.
On May 7, 2019, the PGO approved and sent to the court a bill of indictment in criminal proceedings against five persons accused of causing grievous bodily harm that resulted in Gandziuk’s death.
On June 6, 2019, the Pokrovsky District Court of Dnipropetrovsk region approved a plea arrangement between investigators and five suspects in the case and sentenced them to imprisonment.
Another suspect in the case, Levin fled the country after the crime. In January 2019, the SBU put Levin on a wanted list. According to published information, he disappeared on August 19, 2018.
