Maidan anniversary: Poroshenko presses, investigators lack time, lawyers concerned about speculations

The lawyers argue that the government resists the investigation and the Prosecutor General’s Office lacks equipment to study the video evidence.

Vitaliy Titych, the member of the Attorney’s Advisory Panel Board, which is involved in the investigation, is concerned about the message of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on the fact that the cases over different episodes of the Maidan events must be submitted to the court before the second anniversary of the Maidan protests.

He noted that the case over mass shooting of the activists on the Independence Square in Kyiv on February 20 had been submitted to the court, the same it was done on the last anniversary.

“The huge amount of the actual evidence in this case had not been attached, processed and involved in this criminal proceeding pursuant to the procedural rules. Now the investigators and the prosecutors have to do unnecessary actions, which could have been avoided not to spend a lot of time and resources on using these materials. All this has a negative impact on the quality of the investigation and, accordingly, the on the trial,” Vitaliy Titych explains.

He noted that the case had been submitted under the influence of the Prosecutor General’s Office leadership, despite the fact that the investigators had opposed that.

“The fact that the case is submitted to the court in such condition is a deliberate and proven technology to justify the criminals. As a rule, the proceedings of poor quality are submitted and they usually refer to the perpetrators at the grassroots level,” the lawyer notes.

If it is established that a person acted within the criminal group, it will be impossible to prosecute organizers or customer of the crime, even if the decision on the case is positive.

Vitaliy Titych also reminded that only the prosecutor could make decision on the readiness of the proceeding materials to be submitted to the court. The prosecutor bears responsibility for this decision. Any interference in this decision-making process is unacceptable.

The lawyers also speak about the resistance to the investigation by the Interior Ministry, the Security Service and even judges.

According to the Board member, lawyer Yevhenia Zakrevska, the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the office for special investigations, i.e. investigation, do not constitute the single mechanism and there is often opposition between them.

A total of 2,000 episodes should be considered by a small number of employees. The office has 63 employees, actually even 53 employees. However, only 18 full-time investigators are directly involved in Maidan case investigation.

“Not all these investigators have computers and offices. In fact, there is no opportunity to accumulate a large number of videos. Hundreds of terabytes of video and photo materials are simply scattered through the offices as there is no place to bring, record and process them,” Zakrevska says.

Roman Maselko, the Board member and the Automaidan lawyer, added that the lawyers of the Heavenly Hundred had united to confront all these shortcomings in the investigation. He noted that the necessity for carrying out their own separate investigation might arise.

“There are a huge number of people who were on the other side, I mean traffic police, police officers, judges, who, in principle, are ready to cooperate. But we have no confidence in the prosecutor’s office and the law enforcement agencies. I often hear, ‘I will reveal myself, and what then? I will get neither defense nor the result’,” Roman Maselko says.

He appealed to the law enforcement officers, who are willing to cooperate, to help the investigation, and thus, perhaps, to wash away their guilt. The lawyers and representatives of the victims are ready to find the best means to obtain such evidence that will bring the perpetrators to justice.

According to the Board Chairman Pavlo Dikan, if the investigation at the national level takes no effect, it will be possible to use other mechanisms tested in other countries. In particular, the so-called hybrid investigation as it was in Guatemala, or the hybrid investigation and trial following the example of Bosnia.

He noted that the state leadership was probably not interested in investigating the case and called for completing the investigation without links to the anniversary and creating news opportunities.

According to Vitaliy Titych, the lawyers have no illusions that tomorrow the opposition to the investigation will stop. If the situation does not change, the evidence will be sent to the International Criminal Court. There are also proposals to create the international team to investigate those cases.