On Monday, April 22nd, during a hearing of the Shevchenkovsky regional court of Kiev, which is considering the case of murder of the journalist and publicist Oles Buzina, the lawyers of defendants – from the “Organisations of Nationalists” Andrey Medvedko and Denis Polishchuk – entered into a skirmish with the collegium of judges.
According to the correspondent of the “Strana” news agency, the court refused to consider the 4 motions of the lawyers of the nationalists – Aleksander Dulsky, Sergey Voychenko, and Andrey Fedur, then requested that they state their positions concerning the priority order of examining the proof connected to the case. Instead the lawyer of the accused, Dulsky, started to read the text of the next motion, but the member of the judiciary board Tatiyana Levitskaya tried to interrupt him.
After this there were verbal exchanges between the lawyers and her, with raised voices, during which the lawyer Fedur approached the table where the judges sit and argued with Levitskaya. As a result, the tension was deflated by the presiding judge Evgeny Sidorov, who announced a technical break in the session. Before the break, a controversy flared up between the mother of the deceased journalist and the lawyer Fedur.
Prior to the skirmish the court also heard the positions of the parties concerning the motion of the lawyer Dulsky to challenge the composition of the collegium in view of the replacement of one of the jurors. In addition, Polishchuk and Medvedko’s lawyers submitted three more motions challenging the judges and jurors connected to the case. All of them were left without consideration and estimated by court as an abuse of the rights of defence and delaying the process.
At the previous hearing on April 15th the state prosecutor on the case – the prosecutor of the prosecutor’s office of Kiev Aleksandr Zhila – read the indictment against Polishchuk and Medvedko. They are charged with the murder of Oles Buzina (Part 2 of Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and illegal weapons storage (Part 1 of Article 263 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The accused deny their guilt.
Vitaly Gubin
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