Supreme Court overturns acquittal of ex-Berkut member who tortured Maidan protesters
Following a cassation appeal filed by prosecutors from Prosecutor General’s Office, Supreme Court overturned a ruling by Kyiv Court of Appeal, which upheld first instance court’s acquittal of a former employee of Berkut special police battalion of Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in Kharkiv region. This former law enforcement officer was accused of torturing protesters in Kyiv (part 2 of Article 127 of Criminal Code of Ukraine).
It was announced on the website of the Prosecutor General's Office, informs Censor.NЕТ.
The investigation established that on January 20, 2014, the defendant, together with other law enforcement officers, tortured two protesters, one of whom was a minor. The victims were beaten with hands, feet, truncheons, and thrown from the colonnade of the Dynamo stadium on Hrushevskoho Street. Then they undressed the minor, stabbed him in the thigh with a knife, sprayed pepper liquid into the wound and forced him to walk naked and barefoot in -12°C temperatures through the line of law enforcement officers, singing the Ukrainian anthem. At the same time, they mocked his ideological beliefs.
In 2019, the court of first instance, whose decision was upheld by the court of appeal in 2021, found the Berkut officer not guilty of the charges and acquitted him due to the lack of evidence that he had committed the criminal offense.
The Supreme Court has now overturned the ruling of the Court of Appeal and remanded the criminal proceedings for a new trial to the Court of Appeal.
