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Euromaidan followers to challenge decision on memorialising Odessa victims

On Wednesday, the Odessa city council made a decision to perpetuate the memory of victims of last year’s tragic events at the House of Trade Unions

© EPA/SERGEY GUMENYUK

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ODESSA, June 10. /TASS/. Followers of the so-called Euromaidan movement in Ukraine will go to court to challenge the decision made by the city council of the Black Sea port of Odessa aimed to memorialise victims killed in the House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, says a statement circulated by the Ukrainian Democratic Choice party’s regional branch on Wednesday.

Kirill Filomonov, the branch’s head, told reporters that the draft document had been published just eleven days ahead of the session but not 20 days earlier, as he said was required by law.

On Wednesday, the Odessa city council made a decision to perpetuate the memory of victims of last year’s tragic events at the House of Trade Unions. The document stipulates that the department of design and construction should offer their proposals on the issue.

The decision was made amid protests staged at the city council by the nationalistic party Svoboda and the Euromaidan movement.

The city of Odessa saw riots on May 2, 2014, during which Right Sector militants (the movement recognised as an extremist organisation in Russia) and so-called "Maidan self-defence" militants from Kiev set ablaze the Trade Unions House, where their opponents had taken shelter, and a tent camp where activists were collecting signatures for a referendum on Ukraine's federalization and for the status of a state language for Russian. The attackers did not let anyone leave the burning Trade Unions House building.

Around 48 people were reported dead and 247 injured in the clashes and in the fire in the Trade Unions House. Some Ukrainian politicians said the death toll had reached 116 but they said the Kiev authorities concealed the facts. Investigators have so far failed to name those guilty of the crime.

Meanwhile, 22 people were charged with organising riots. Eleven out of the suspects are under arrest and another eleven are on the wanted list. At the same time, investigators have failed to find evidence proving the arson of the Trade Unions House had been planned.

Odessa's Malinovsky district court sent the indictment back to the Prosecutor General's Office for further investigation, pointing out that the indictment accusing 22 persons of involvement in the tragic events on May 2 lacked details and factual evidence proving the suspects' guilt. All the suspects are federalisation supporters while the detained attackers, who allegedly beat to death people injured and charred in the fire at Trade Unions House, were released following a ruling of the Ukrainian court.

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