Judges violated Chervinskyi’s right to fair trial – lawyer Kusa on actions of judges
The panel of judges of the Kyiv Court of Appeal upheld the ruling of the investigating judge of the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv to extend the detention of Special Forces Colonel Roman Chervinskyi, which was issued without the presence of his lawyers. Chervinskyi’s lawyers consider this a violation of Chervinsky’s right to a fair trial.
This was stated by the ex-intelligence officer's lawyer Liudmyla Kusa in a comment to Censor.NET.
"Today, the decision of September 6 to extend the term of detention of Roman Chervinskyi was reviewed. This ruling has already lost its validity," the lawyer explained. - "However, due to the fact that the appellate judges repeatedly recused themselves from this case, the consideration was so long. Two panels recused themselves from the case. Today there was a third panel. The most interesting thing is that this third panel had already recused itself in the appeal against the notice of suspicion. They wrote there that they had already heard the case three times, and in the opinion of an outside observer, they could no longer be objective. And here, they refused to take the same recusal, although we challenged them and said that they had already written three times that the suspicion was justified, that there were risks, and they would not write something different for the fourth time. But they refused and continued to listen to us.
Accordingly, we made a decision, upheld the decision, agreed that the suspicion was justified and the risks were present. In my opinion, this is a direct violation of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Bangalore Principles. Still, if the panel has already approved a decision that was in force, they will definitely not cancel the previous decision. Therefore, I believe that this is a violation of the right to a fair trial."
Liudmyla Kusa added that the lawyers plan to file a complaint with the High Council of Justice. "We will definitely appeal to the High Council of Justice, because our first instance ruling was issued in violation of the right to defense, and defense lawyers were not allowed to participate in the case," the defense lawyer said. And even today I provided the court with the video on a disk. But they refused to watch it. At the same time, the three of them, without actually having the right to consider the case, considered and upheld the ruling, which was clearly subject to revocation. These are direct provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code. If the case is considered without the participation of a defense counsel, whose participation is mandatory, the ruling is subject to reversal. And the ruling was issued without contractual defense counsel."
The next hearing in Chervinskyi's case will be held on January 25. The appellate court is to consider the current ruling to extend the ex-intelligence officer's detention.
