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Second suspect in abducting Russian citizen’s lawyer detained in Ukraine

The first suspect was arrested around a week ago

Alexander Alexandrov and Yuri Grabovsky Sergei Reznik/TASS

Alexander Alexandrov and Yuri Grabovsky

© Sergei Reznik/TASS

KIEV, March 25. /TASS/. The second suspect in abducting Yuri Grabovsky, the late lawyer for detained Russian citizen Alexander Aleksandrov on trial in Ukraine, was held in the southern Odessa region on Thursday, Ukraine’s Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoly Matios said.

The suspect was detained "thanks to a very meticulous work" of a small group of officers of Ukraine’s Security Service jointly with investigators of the Prosecutor-General’s Office and the Security Service’s branch in Odessa, he said.

Another suspect was arrested around a week ago, Matios added.

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Matios said that one of the detained persons had confessed to the crime and unveiled details about the circumstances of the lawyer’s death.

"I can say preliminary that Grabovsky was killed in a violent way and shot to death from firearms," he said, adding that evidence items of the two perpetrators had been eliminated at the scene.

The perpetrators sought to make police believe that Grabovsky fled Ukraine.

Earlier reports said that Grabovsky, who mysteriously disappeared in early March, has been found dead in Ukraine. The association of Ukrainian lawyers said in a statement on Friday that the suspect in the crime has been detained.

The lawyer was in Odessa, southern Ukraine, on March 5 and returned to his Kiev office the following day, and no one saw him later. His personal belongings were found in hotel Arcadia in Odessa while a notice on the lawyer’s behalf was posted on his page in a social network saying he had left the country for security reasons.

Police have opened a criminal case under the "premeditated murder" article over Grabovsky’s disappearance. Oksana Sokolovskaya, the lawyer for another detained Russian Yevgeny Yerofeyev, earlier said that Grabovsky’s disappearance was related to the court’s hearings on the case and that the materials on the defense for the Russian nationals in court had disappeared together with Grabovsky.

The hearing into the case of Russian nationals Aleksandrov and Yerofeyev at Kiev's Goloseevsky district court was adjourned on March 15 over the absence of Grabovsky.

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