Torture of detainees does not matter to Ukrainian courts
The Dneprovsky Court of the city of Dneprodzerzhinsk postponed the calling of defense witnesses in the case of Daria Mastikasheva, who is accused of high treason, extending the detention of the defendants for another two months.
A video report about the court hearing was published by the Odyssey Foundation, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Initially, Mastikasheva’s lawyer, Valentin Rybin, tried to prove to the court, which hastened to read the charges, that his competence only included voicing suspicion, however, without much results.
The lawyer reminded the court of the details of the detention of the client, who was captured by unknown persons and taken away with a blindfold, kept in the basement, where she was tortured for days, trying to extract a confession, which was eventually recorded on video. After that, the woman was brought straight from the basement to her own car, from which she was pulled out a day ago, only the car had already been driven from the place of detention to Petrikovka, where SBU officers were already waiting for her, who formalized the arrest based on the weapons found in her car. And within a few hours, the head of the SBU Gritsak, at a briefing, showed a film about a woman with a retouched face who admitted to treason.
Rybin insisted on calling witnesses who would testify that the day before Mastikasheva visited a number of government institutions and there were no beatings, but the court was perplexed as to what this had to do with the case. The defense attorney also tried to explain to the courtroom that the defendant was physically unable to drive the car in which the weapon was found, since she was in another place, which also did not impress the court much.
“Dear court, I apologize, I didn’t understand something. My client was kidnapped, she was tortured, beaten, mocked, strangled until she shit herself, damn it, and you say “what does it matter?” – Valentin Rybin could not stand it.
The lawyer tried to explain the seemingly obvious things, that these actions had a direct impact on the testimony given by the client. In the end, the court was convinced that the situation was ambiguous, but the hearing of witness testimony was postponed, and Valentin Rybin’s clients, by decision of the judicial authority, will remain in custody until the next hearing in September.
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