On the morning of March 27th, the second court session of the Ukrainian People’s Tribunal has begun in Donetsk. According to a correspondent of the DPR official website, testimony of witnesses, experts, as well as those who have fallen victim when the current regime in Kiev used armed forces against the civilian population of Donbass are being heard.
“During today’s court session, we are going to hear the victims, witnesses, experts regarding the use of armed forces against the civilian population. Yesterday, at the first hearing of the Ukrainian People’s Tribunal, we have already begun hearing the horror stories of the misfortunes and tragedies of citizens of Ukraine. We have heard five victims who have fallen victim to the war crimes. Unfortunately, the number of such episodes and victims is so great that, if we consider each separately, it will take several years. In this connection, the term of the Ukrainian People’s Tribunal is unknown to anyone. All six blocks of the criminal case will be heard: the use of armed forces against the civilian population, torture, blockade, the creation of illegal armed units, propaganda of war, etc. After the review of all these episodes, the Ukrainian People’s Tribunal will make a decision. What it will be we do not know yet. We very much hope that after the full implementation of the Minsk Agreements, this decision will be the basis of the verdict and all those guilty of crimes will be brought to criminal responsibility,” presiding judge for the Ukrainian People’s Tribunal Elena Shishkina stressed.
She said that the summonses to the court sessions had been sent out to the accused in advance at the official e-mail addresses of the Ukrainian president’s administration, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the AFU. “These messages were sent to each criminal involved, there is an evidence of this in the criminal case. They are the persons who stand at the origins of the war crimes. To date, we have not received any response from the perpetrators to challenge the court, but this is not surprising, since they are only brave in giving commands to shoot civilians, while sitting in their offices in Kiev. And they have no courage to come here and look into the eyes of the mother who lost her child,” Elena Shishkina declared.
Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Viktor Belyuv, a graduate of Sumy Higher Command Artillery School who had served in the army for 28 years, acted as an expert today. He noted that the current Ukrainian government had used murderous weapons against the civilian population, which a person simply cannot survive. “Air force, large-caliber artillery was used against civilians, who are not guilty of anything,” he stated.
Witness Konstantin Moroz, a forensic medical expert from Lugansk who worked in the summer of 2014 (from June 2nd to mid-September) told, “I did not think that this could happen in my life. I saw what an ordinary person should not have seen. The city was left with no water and electricity. And you understand what a forensic medical examination morgue is when it has no water and electricity, when there are about 70 bodies. Every day we got the dead. The most terrible day was July 18th, when we had 35 corpses in the morning. Almost all the victims had the same diagnosis — shell explosion injury. Among them a pregnant woman. In the same neighborhood, the family also perished that was going to leave Lugansk. From the village of Mirny, a dead pregnant woman was also brought, which was supposed to give birth in a month,” he recalled.
Judicial sessions of the Ukrainian People’s Tribunal in Donetsk will continue. Recall that first in Lugansk, representatives of the public initiated the creation of the UPT, and then in Donetsk a working meeting took place, where judges, jurors, prosecutors and defenders of the Ukrainian People’s Tribunal were picked. The charges were presented to 8 representatives of the current top leadership of Ukraine: Petr Poroshenko, Arsen Avakov, Alexander Turchinov, Vladimir Groisman, Viktor Muzhenko, Stepan Poltorak, Andrei Parubiy, Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
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