Blogger Armen Martirosyan’s lawyer prepared all the documents for an appeal to the Investigative Committee of Russia with a request to initiate a criminal case against SBU officers who, under the threat of using aviation, deployed a passenger plane.
Armen Martirosyan spoke about this on the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Let us recall that previously a citizen of Armenia Martirosyan Armen Araratovich appealed to the District administrative court of the city of Kyiv with a claim against the Security Service of Ukraine to recognize the actions of the SBU of October 21, 2016 as illegal.
“In fact, the situation is, to put it mildly, outrageous. First of all, it is necessary to note the following. There are no criminal proceedings against my client on the territory of Ukraine and nothing that would give at least an approximate reason for anyone to simply search him or check his passport. The SBU officers did not just go too far: they are a threat to peaceful aircraft in the air carrying out an international flight. Yes, he is not flying to some distant overseas country, he is flying to Belarus, but this does not matter.
Imagine the feeling of a pilot to whom the dispatcher conveys information: “If you don’t turn around and return now, fighters will be raised against you,” the pilot asks, “What happened?”, This is a natural question, and the dispatcher answered, “Come and find out.” At that moment, the pilot could have suspected anything.
We are not just asking to initiate a criminal case against SBU officials who have anything to do with this. We ask everyone to pay attention to this. At the moment, it seems that the “best” army in Europe, as Poroshenko declares, is currently only capable of shooting down and threatening peaceful aircraft in the air. We would like to draw attention, in particular to public safety, to the fact that several conventions have been adopted that relate to the safety of aircraft; we want you to pay attention to this, because there is no reason to threaten to shoot down a peaceful aircraft in the air,” said the victim’s lawyer, Daniil Berman.
According to the lawyer, this case should attract the attention of international authorities that monitor the safety of passenger aircraft in order to influence Ukraine.
“We didn’t just write to the Russian Investigative Committee, but to a special unit called the “Department for the Investigation of Crimes Related to the Use of Prohibited Means and Methods of Warfare.” Since in this case we are talking about a civilian aircraft and a threat to use fighter equipment in service against civilians, that’s why we turned to them so that they could give a legal assessment. This is not just an investigative committee, it is a special unit that investigates war crimes in Ukraine, including crimes committed against civilians in the Donbass. We count on the initiation of a criminal case and an international reaction. There are relevant agencies that monitor the safety of civilian aircraft,” said the lawyer.
In his appeal to the Russian Investigative Committee, Armen Martirosyan said that he was asking the investigative authorities of the Russian Federation to recognize Ukraine as involved in international terrorism.
“I have no material claims against the Ukrainian side. I have only a demand: to admit illegal actions of the Ukrainian authorities. In my appeal to the investigative committee, I have an additional wording: to recognize the actions of the current Ukrainian government authorities as actually involved in international terrorism,” Martirosyan noted.
Daniil Berman, Martirosyan’s lawyer, told Politnavigator about the essence of the statement to the Investigative Committee.
“Today we can safely say that there were no grounds for the detention and criminal prosecution of Armen Martirosyan on the territory of Ukraine. The only complaint that the Ukrainian authorities could have against him is that he is on the notorious “Peacemaker” website. Therefore, there are no complaints against him from Ukrainian law enforcement. There is nothing in the register of registered criminal cases against him. That is, the plane on which Martirosyan was flying was turned back due to some unknown reason. Apparently, there are connections with the actions of some unknown persons from the SBU.
Therefore, since Armen is now on Russian territory, we decided here in Russia to draw the attention of Russian law enforcement agencies and the Investigative Committee to this case. While in Ukraine we have not achieved the truth, and since a military plane could take off against a civilian one, this is exactly how the pilots were threatened if they did not return to Kiev, then we are talking about a crime of an international nature, since one state threatens to shoot down an aircraft of another state . By the way, there could have been citizens of Russia, and not just Belarus, Ukraine and Armenia, on this ship. And if this plane had crashed, then the Russians could have died too.
That is why we turned to the State Department for the Investigation of War Crimes, created under the Investigative Committee of Russia, with a written request to initiate a criminal case against SBU officials in connection with this case. We ask the Investigative Committee to give a legal assessment of all this and make some kind of procedural decision. We insist on initiating a criminal case. Our application has already been accepted. Now Armen Martirosyan will have to be questioned in this case. They will take a written explanation from him, and only after that the investigator will decide to initiate a criminal case,” said Daniil Berman.