KIEV, November 12 /TASS/. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has called for speeding up investigation into all crimes committed against pro-European protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square. He also said that the culprits should be convicted in absentia, the presidential press service reported on Wednesday.
“We have no right to drag on it any longer. Not a single death should go unpunished. Everybody who committed and orchestrated those crimes should be punished,” Poroshenko told the heads of law enforcement agencies whom he met on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian president said the fact that most of those suspects were fugitives could not be an obstacle to their prosecution and conviction.
A new Ukrainian law that took effect on October 31 allows holding trials of persons suspected of crimes against the foundations of Ukraine’s national security in absentia.
“A law initiated by me gives us ground for convicting them in absentia,” Poroshenko stressed.
The Ukrainian authorities have filed lawsuit against the former leadership headed by President Viktor Yanukovich to the International Criminal Court in a move that will make it possible to judge and punish them under international laws.
Ukraine’s Chief Prosecutor Vitaly Yaryoma met a delegation of the Hague Tribunal on Wednesday to discuss the investigation into Yanukovich’s case. The International Criminal Court has promised its assistance in putting all persons linked to crimes against the pro-European supporters on Independence Square on international wanted list. Yaryoma also said that a representative of the international prosecutor had arrived in Kiev to study all the cases to be handed over to The Hague afterwards.
“He (representative) promised to contribute to putting high-ranking Ukrainian officials whose complicity to the crimes on Maidan has been proven on the international wanted list,” Ukraine’s chief prosecutor said.
Yaryoma also noted that 7 criminal lawsuits against 13 persons who committed crimes against the protesters had already been sent to court. Investigations into the mass shooting of people on Institutskaya Street and activists in the Mariinsky Park on Grushevsky Street are still under way, Yaryoma went on to say.
Earlier, Valentin Nalivaichenko, the head of Ukraine’s Security Service, said that the former Ukraine’s Security Service chief, Alexander Yakimenko, was suspected of ordering the protesters’ mass shootings.