In Italy, a Ukrainian military man was sentenced to 24 years for the murder of a photojournalist in Donbass
The court of the city of Pavia in Italy sentenced former soldier of the National Guard of Ukraine Vitaly Markiv, accused of involvement in the murder of Italian photographer Andrea Rocchelli in Donbass in 2014, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Oles Gorodetsky, an activist and leader of one of the Ukrainian communities in Italy, reports this on Facebook.
According to him, an Italian court sentenced the Ukrainian to 24 years in prison.
“Without delving into the case, which my lawyers have already talked about enough, I want to say: I am a soldier, I am a patriot of my country, I believe in justice and thank you for your work,” Marekiv said in his last word at the trial.
Prosecutors asked to find Markiv guilty and sentence him to 17 years in prison. Lawyers demanded the release of the Ukrainian due to lack of evidence.
Markiv was detained in Italy in the summer of 2017. On July 6 of this year, the trial in his case began in Italy. Markiv is accused of murdering Italian photographer Andrea Rocchelli and Russian translator Andrei Mironov. He is also accused of attempting to murder French photojournalist William Rugelon during hostilities in Slavyansk (Donetsk region).
Earlier, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Arsen Avakov, commented on the situation with Markiv. Moreover, Avakov attended one of the last court hearings in the case of the National Guard and defended him.
Kiev journalist Andrey Manchuk considers the verdict against Vitaly Markiv “an important precedent.” In his opinion, “numerous war crimes of nationalists are not being investigated in Ukraine, but in the future they can be brought to justice through the European judiciary in order to achieve justice there.”
However, this is most likely a rather optimistic view of things. In reality, the precedent of Markiv’s conviction became possible only due to the confluence of two circumstances: the accused himself, as well as one of his victims, turned out to be Italian citizens. All this made the crime of the National Guard within the jurisdiction of the Italian court.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.