The says the International Criminal Court (ICC) thinks there is not enough proof of the magnitude of Euromaidan crimes, and Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko is going to The Hague, the Netherlands, to hold talks with ICC representatives pending the anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity, according to Channel 5.
”The next anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity (the end of November) is coming soon, and the Prosecutor General will mark this day in The Hague. He`ll be holding talks with ICC attorneys there and they are to determine which information we should additionally submit. They may also decide on the timing of the said procedures,” Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General Eugene Enin said, Channel 5 reported.
The ICC says that the killing of pro-Ukrainian activists on Kyiv`s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square, the main site of the Revolution of Dignity) early in 2014 was ”of localized character,” while the Ukrainian side has been trying to persuade the international court that mass murders were committed across Ukraine, and the suppression of the Revolution was reported in all the Ukrainian regions. What is more, Ukraine insists that shootings on the Maidan were preliminarily planned.
”ICC representatives think that there is the lack of the magnitude of the events. They say that what concerned the massacre was of quite localized character for the most part. With the efforts of Ukrainian investigators and with the support of diplomats, we are trying to convince the ICC that these were large-scale developments. It`s not only about what was happening in Kyiv, it`s about the suppression of peaceful protests in other regions of Ukraine, in fact they were all over Ukraine,” he said.
To ensure that the Maidan case be considered comprehensively, Kyiv should provide proof that the suppression covered the entire territory of the country, he said.
”The second issue of the ICC`s concern is that they are not completely sure that the shooting on the Maidan was premeditated, that is was planned ahead and orchestrated. Yet, we insist on its premeditation,” Enin said.
More than a hundred people, later dubbed the Heavenly Hundred Heroes, were killed and dozens were injured during the Maidan events, which started on November 30, 2013, and ended when the then president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country on February 22, 2014. The PGO in 2014 began criminal proceedings against former Berkut riot police officers Oleksandr Zinchenko and Pavlo Abroskin. They are suspected of killing 39 Maidan activists on Instytutska Street in the center of Kyiv on February 20, 2014. Two years later, on February 10, 2016, the PGO, which has witnessed the repeated reshuffle of chief prosecutors, announced that it had also completed an investigation into a case involving three more former Berkut police officers, – Oleksandr Marynchenko, Serhiy Tamtura, and Oleh Yanyshevsky – and had sent their case to court. These individuals are charged with committing an act of terror, abuse of office, deliberate homicide, attempt to murder and resistance to peaceful rallies, as well as kidnapping people and hiding weapons after committing crimes. These criminal cases have been combined into one Berkut case.
There is a theory that Russian special forces were involved in the shooting on the Maidan.
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