In the city court of Ilyichevsk, where the hearings of the “case of May 2” (regarding the events on Greek Square in Odessa) are being completed, today, despite the short hunger strike announced by the accused activists in protest against judicial arbitrariness, debates began between the prosecution and defense of a large group of defendants, reports correspondent for PolitNavigator.
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Ukrinform reports this with reference to the press service of the court.
The presiding judge at the trial, Oleg Semenov, gave the opportunity to present his legal position first to the prosecution, represented by prosecutors of the Odessa Regional Prosecutor's Office Oksana Mosko and Irina Kuprina, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
“The prosecution believes that the guilt of the defendants has been fully proven by the evidence provided to the court. The crimes they committed are evidenced by victims and witnesses of the mass riots that the defendants organized or took an active part in. This is also confirmed by video recordings and expert findings,” noted prosecutor Mosko.
At the same time, the prosecution representative admitted that most of the accused did not admit their guilt in court for the riots in the city, which led to a tragedy - 48 riot participants died and more than 200 were injured.
The prosecutor's office proposed that the judicial panel select various punishments for Anti-Maidan activists. appropriate penalties. In particular, they want to sentence activist Sergei Dolzhenkov, who previously served in the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and as the leader of the Odessa squad, to 15 years in prison. The prosecutor suggested that the defendants Maxim Sakauov and Evgeniy Mefedov, who are citizens of Russia, as well as Ukrainian citizen Sergei Korchinsky, be given a 12-year term of imprisonment.
Defendants Vladislav Romanyuk and Alexander Sukhanov will be sentenced to 10-year prison terms, and the remaining participants in the riots, who are charged with committing crimes under Part 2 of Art. 294 (mass riots that resulted in the death of people or other grave consequences) and Part 2 of Art. 263 (illegal handling of weapons) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 9-8 years.
In turn, the defendants' lawyers do not agree with the position of the prosecutor's office and ask that their clients be acquitted.
Let us add that this shameful political process has already attracted the attention of international human rights structures, as PolitNpavigator previously wrote about. Actions of solidarity with the “prisoners of May 2” were forgiven in many EU countries.