Court orders cause of death of Odessa massacre’s victims to be made public

In front of Odessa’s Trade Union Building the day after the May 2 massacre.

 TASS reports:

The Administrative Court of Appeal of the Odessa Region in southern Ukraine has upheld the ruling by the first instance court obligating the authorities to make public the cause of death of some 50 people in last year’s massacre in the city’s Trade Unions House, local media reported Tuesday.

In May 2015, the Odessa district administrative court, after a months-long legal battle, granted the public’s demand that the Ukrainian Interior Ministry and the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination make the data public. But the ruling was appealed, and the appeal was considered Tuesday.

Journalists of the “May 2 Group” Leonid Shtekel and Sergey Dibrov, conducting an independent investigation of last May’s tragedy, asked the court to rule to make public the forensic examination’s results.

For a few months, they were trying to get access to data stored in the archives of the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination and capable of giving an answer to the question what caused people to die in May last year. But investigators have steadfastly refused to provide access to them citing secrecy of investigation.

“The Odessa administrative court of appeal has upheld the ruling of the first instance on the lawsuit of Shtekel and Dibrov, in line with which journalists may get copies of forensic experts’ conclusions on the ‘May 2 case’,” Odessa publication Dumskaya wrote after Tuesday’s hearing. […]

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