Newsweek: Kiev secretly admitted “suicide” of Party of Regions officials were murders

Newsweek reports:

[…] Melnychuk was a prosecutor in the southern port town of Odessa, governed by Kolomoisky ally Ihor Palytsia. He is just one of at least eight officials appointed by the Yanukovych regime, ousted by pro-democracy protesters in February last year, to die in mysterious circumstances over the past three months.

And Ukraine’s law enforcement doesn’t want to talk about them.

When Melnychuk’s body was found on 22 March, police initially told local journalists he had committed suicide. But it soon emerged that alarmed neighbours had called police on hearing of a late-night struggle. Pathologists found he had been badly beaten before the fall. Later the same day, Odessa prosecutors registered Melnychuk’s “suicide” as a murder, and arrested a former police officer they describe only as “citizen K”.

In reply to a legal request by Newsweek for information on investigations into the deaths of seven other former officials, all tied to Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, the General Prosecutor’s Office responded that all the information about all the deaths was a state secret – a staggering claim to make about a series of apparently unrelated civilian deaths they told the press were suicides.

After an intervention by the Presidential Administration, the General Prosecutor’s Office disclosed that four of the seven deaths are being investigated as murders, with another investigation as yet unclassified. The two remaining cases had been closed with no evidence of a crime. No other information was provided. […]

Read “Mystery of Ukraine’s Richest Man and a Series of Unlikely Suicides” in full

Antifashist.com, who links to this Newsweek report, comments about it:

[…] But then Newsweek began to point the fingers of each of those killed to the figure of [the Ukrainian oligarch] Akhmetov. Interestingly, if in Russia seven representatives of the opposition party were mysteriously killed in a row, would they also be looking for business roots [to the possible crimes]? That is, would a political version of  the murders would not be even considered?

Newsweek: Kiev secretly admitted “suicide” of Party of Regions officials were murders

SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.