Inconsistencies found in official version of Sheremet murder probe - UNIAN / media
Journalists have studied a forensic analysis report, which Avakov said was "decisive" for the investigators to detain the alleged murder suspects, as UNIAN reported.
Ukrainian investigative journalists with the Slidstvo.info project say they have found the forensic analysis report used in the probe into the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet far from being unambiguous, while evidence presented at a police briefing, journalists say, is unconvincing. Meanwhile, it is this forensic analysis report that Interior Minister Arsen Avakov referred to as decisive for the investigators to detain the alleged murder suspects, Slidstvo reports. Journalists have studied a copy of the analysis report and now claim that experts have not provided unambiguous conclusions that it is the suspects who have been spotted by CCTV cameras.
Four experts analyzed whether the pediatric surgeon Yulia Kuzmenko could be a killer who planted a bomb under Sheremet’s car and set it off in the morning. One expert could not identify them as the same person. Psychological analysis has shown that they could be. Portrait analysis could not give a clear answer. Forensic gait analysis called the evidence "conditionally relevant" to validate the identity of persons in question. Avakov also draws on the findings of a British forensic expert. Journalists analyzed the results of a previous analysis of October 1. According to the document, a woman who took pictures of CCTV cameras on her mobile phone, a woman who planted a bomb, and a woman who could detonate Sheremet’s car, are likely to be the same person. This means that all three footages show Yulia Kuzmenko, rather than another suspect, Yana Duhar. At the same time, according to journalists, it is extremely difficult to prove that the women on the images are the same person if the photo of Kuzmenko and the person in the video are compared.
Journalists also suggest that this forensic gait report "could cast doubt on the findings of investigators and ruin a solid story," so it was never made public. As UNIAN reported earlier, Sheremet was killed in a car blast in the center of Kyiv on the morning of July 20, 2016. On December 12, police said they suspected five persons of complicity in the crime, former Donbas war volunteer and musician Andrii Antonenko, army volunteer and paediatric surgeon Yulia Kuzmenko (nom de guerre "Lysa," or "Fox"), nurse with a paratrooper unit Yana Duhar, and a family couple of army volunteers Inna Hryshchenko ("Puma") and Vladyslav Hryshchenko ("Bucha").
Law enforcers claim that the goal of the Sheremet assassination was to destabilize the socio-political situation in Ukraine, while Antonenko was allegedly "carried away by ultranationalist ideas, cultivating the greatness of the Aryan race." At the same time, speaking in court, Antonenko noted that he is "half-Jew", thus ridiculing the claim of his "ultranationalist" views and "promotion of Aryan race." He also said it was not him at a CCTV footage, presented at a police briefing, showing a man near the crime scene. In particular, he noted a different shape of beard that man was sporting, lack of tattoos on his arms, and the fact that the man's ears were intact unlike Antonenko's which are fractured as a result of wrestling practices.
UNIAN
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