Prosecutor in the Sheremet case says he will not drop the charges
Mykhailo Tishyn, prosecutor in the case of the murder of journalist Pavlo Sheremet, said that he was not considering dropping the charges brought against the suspects Andriy Antonenko, Yana Duhar, and Yulia Kuzmenko.
The state prosecutor told Watchers about this on September 5, after a hearing in the Shevchenko District Court of Kyiv.
"At the moment, no, we are not considering [the possibility of the prosecutor's office dropping the charges]. The court proceedings are ongoing," he said.
Instead, lawyer Stanislav Kulyk noted to the media outlet that he had expected the prosecutor to drop the charges.
"Of course there were (expectations). I'm sure there could have been such a solution. But, unfortunately, as always, law enforcement agencies are not willing to correct their mistakes," he shared.
Andriy Antonenko also said that he had hoped for the charges to be fropped: "Everyone had such hopes (for the charges to be dropped). But, unfortunately, this requires will and character." He noted that nowadays, attending court hearings is problematic for him. After all, he is serving in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and defending the state from the russian aggressor.
Yana Duhar is currently also serving in the army. On February 25, she went to the military commissariat to be registered and drafted to the ranks of the UAF.
As the media outlet notes, on September 5, the court in the Sheremet case convened for the second time since the full-scale russian invasion. And for the second time, the meeting was postponed due to the two main jurors being absent.
Juror Natalya Hloba is abroad, and juror Hryhoriy Firsov is serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
At the next hearing, on September 29, the court will select new jurors. After that, the case will start from the very beginning, says lawyer Kulyk. Before this, the court had already examined the evidence of the prosecution and proceeded to study the evidence of the defense.
As of September 2022, Yana Duhar is on bail, but without procedural obligations. From the moment of the full-scale russian invasion, which began on February 24, the vaildity period of the measures of restraint expired for all the accused, as court hearings were not held.
As IMI reported, Pavlo Sheremet died in a car explosion in Kyiv on July 20, 2016. On December 12, 2019, the Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov announced that the National Police had detained and reasonably notified of suspicion those involved in the murder of Pavlo Sheremet. Currently, among the suspects are Sergeant of the Special Operations Forces Andriy Antonenko (Riffmaster), military medic Yana Duhar, and volunteer Yuliya Kuzmenko. In January 2022, the court left Antonenko and Kuzmenko under night house arrest, and Duhar was released on bail of UAH 168,160. They claim no involvement in the murder and consider the prosecution to be politically motivated.
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