Miracles, it seems, do happen and people who have criminal charges fabricated against them are sometimes released. Only who will give Yury Moseyenkov back the five years of court and investigation procrastination with almost three years spent in a SIZO [remand unit]?

It all began in May 2005 when, leaving the house to go to work, Yury was met by police officers who asked him to come with them to the police station. There he learned that he was accused of murder. And there they tortured him until he signed blank pieces of paper. For some time he had no access to a lawyer. He even once attempted suicide. 

He had not committed the murder, but the court did not believe him and in 2009 he was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment.

Yury’s lawyers, Oleh Levytsky and Oleg Veremeyenko continued fighting for his acquittal and release. Thanks to their efforts the sentence was revoked and the case sent for new examination to the first instance court (the Dniprovsky District Court in Kyiv).  The court today, 17 May, issued a ruling to send the case for further investigation and to release Yury Moseyenkov from remand on a signed undertaking not to abscond.

The case is truly incredible. The lawyers discovered that around 50 pages, including the protocols regarding the inspection of the place of the crime and reconstruction of the events were missing. Due to “technical reasons” the video with the reconstruction of the circumstances of the murder became unusable and in some mysterious fashion ALL material evidence, including the murder weapon, as well as the jacket with the blood stains which had supposedly belonged to Moseyenkov disappeared. There was a muddle anyway over this jacket since the file said that Moseyenkov’s jacket was blue, yet in the protocol of the search the colour is given as brown, and the forensic analysts received a “black synthetic jacket with black lining”.

All of this clearly suggested that the case against Yury Moseyenkov was fabricated, and the court could not fail to take this into consideration.

The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) has learned that the court issued an additional decision addressed to the Kyiv Prosecutor regarding the need to investigate unlawful fabrication of evidence for the prosecution by officials of the Dniprovsky District Prosecutor’s Office in Kyiv.

And this cost one young man who had committed no crime 5 years of his life which cannot be returned.

The case was supported by the UHHRU Strategic Litigation Fund.