Ukrainian police report progress in investigation of Odesa events of May 2, 2014
The Odesa police has made a significant progress in the investigation of the events of May 2, 2014, during which 48 people were killed and over 200 injured, Dmytro Holovin, the head of the Ukrainian National Police's Main Department in Odesa region, has said at a briefing.
The new investigation team, the third one, "since the beginning of this year, has made more than it was done in the entire past year," he said.
In particular, ten investigators and five operatives are currently engaged in the investigation of the events of May 2, other participants in the briefing said. Over 70 witnesses were questioned in the past four months. However, testimonies of those people are either biased or relatively uninformative due to the time passed since the events, the participants said.
Two new expert evaluations were scheduled during the investigation, the chemical one and the forensic ballistic one. Three persons, who had been involved in the events, have been notified that they are suspect. They were put on wanted lists afterwards. A participant in the events of May 2 was detained and is currently in custody, the briefing participants said.
A total of 14 people are the suspects in the cases investigated by the Ukrainian National Police's Main Department in Odesa region, they are on wanted lists. Investigators are also interested in actions committed by 27 people, who had been involved in the events in Hretska Square, and 50 people, who had been involved in the events in the Kulykove Pole. However, the issues how to qualify their actions and whether to inform them of the suspect status are still under consideration. Identities of 111 persons among those injured were established, the remaining persons out of 212 injured people were not identified due to the fact that they had provided fictitious names in healthcare facilities, participants in the briefing told reporters.
The fire investigation confirmed that the omission of firemen had caused such a large number of victims at the Trade Unions House in the Kulykove Pole, Oleksandr Vakulenko, the Ukrainian National Police deputy chief and the investigation department head, said.
In this regard, the case against three employees of the State Emergencies Service's Main Department in Odesa region has been already handed over to Odesa's Prymorsky District Court, and another two defendants, Volodymyr Bodelan, the former head of the State Emergencies Service's Main Department in Odesa region, and Ruslan Velyky, his first deputy, are on wanted lists.
On May 2, 2014, 48 people were killed and over 200 were injured during mass riots in Odesa. Investigators established that the Odesa mass riots were organized and deliberately planned.
Following the events, several of Ukraine's law enforcement structures initiated about a dozen of criminal cases on various charges. Some of them are currently pending in courts.
