Ex-Berkut soldiers remanded into custody over murder of Maidan activists
KYIV. April 24 (Interfax) - Three former soldiers of Ukraine's now-defunct Berkut elite riot police force, accused of killing activists during last year's protests on Independence Square (Maidan) in the center of Kyiv, have been remanded into custody.
This decision was adopted by Kyiv's Pechersky District Court on April 23 at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office, the press service of the Prosecutor's Office reported.
"No one will be forgotten. The Maidan investigations will be brought to an end," Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has said.
It was reported on April 21 that in the city of Kharkiv units of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Security Service of Ukraine had detained three ex-officers of the Berkut unit accused of killing demonstrators on Kyiv's Maidan in February 2014.
"Two of them are commanders of different Berkut units," Shokin told a press briefing in Kyiv on April 21.
These persons, who today hold high-ranking posts in Kharkiv's police department, are suspected of opening fire on peaceful demonstrators in Kyiv on February 18, 2014, the prosecutor general said.
Not all of them live in Kharkiv, he said.
Investigators probing security service actions to disperse a peaceful march in Kyiv's Mariyinsky Park on February 18, 2014 claim that five people were killed, 62 suffered gunshot wounds and over 400 sustained bodily injuries on the city's Hrushevsky, Instytutska and Krepostnoy Streets.
"The involvement of officers from the Berkut special operations police battalion of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's branch for the Kharkiv region has been established," the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office said.
The ex-Berkut officers face charges of abuse of power entailing grave consequences and attempted murder.