KIEV, December 22. /TASS/. Kiev’s district court has allowed a team of prosecutors from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to be granted access to information on activists from the radical organization Right Sector and the Bratstvo (Brotherhood) party concerning their possible involvement in the February 2014 shooting in Kiev’s central Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square.
"Right sector activists who seized the sixth floor of the Dnepr hotel during the protests are being checked for their possible involvement in the above crimes," the Pechersky district court said in a ruling made public on Thursday. Investigators will study data on Right Sector activists to probe into their involvement in the killing and wounding of law enforcers on February 18-20, 2014.
The court allowed prosecutors to be granted access to confidential information of telecommunications operators about their telephone conversation in a period from January 1, 2014 to December 16, 2016.
Protests in Kiev’s central Maidan Nezaleznosti, or Independence Square, broke out in late 2013, when Yanukovich put off signing an association agreement with the European Union in order to examine the deal more thoroughly. This move sparked mass riots, known as Euromaidan, that eventually led to a coup in February 2014, ousting Yanukovich from the presidency and forcing him to flee from Ukraine.
During the standoff in Kiev, radicals placed a tent camp in the Independence Square, seized a number of administrative buildings in the center of the city and set up the so-called ‘self-defense forces,’ which plunged into open fighting with law enforcers. In a period from February 18 to 20, 2014, more than 80 people were killed in Kiev. Hundreds were wounded. Twenty died later in hospital. Among those killed and wounded were officers of the Berkut special police force who were accused of shooting at protesters.