The Kyiv Court of Appeals sentenced a former Berkut police officer for torturing protesters at the colonnade of the central entrance to the Dynamo Stadium named after V. Lobanovskyi in Kyiv.
This was reported by the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office.
This decision overturned the acquittal of the Dnipro District Court of Kyiv. The prosecutors proved the guilt of the former "Berkut" and at the same time an active policeman in torture (Part 2 of Article 127 of the Criminal Code). He was sentenced to six years in prison.
According to the prosecutors, the man deliberately tortured the participants of the Revolution of Dignity on January 20, 2014 at the intersection of Mykhailo Hrushevsky Street and Parkova Road. Two activists were thrown from the colonnade, and one of them, a minor, was undressed at a temperature of -12 °C and wounded in the thigh of the right leg with a knife. He was sprayed with pepper spray and forced to walk naked through a group of law enforcement officers while singing the national anthem of Ukraine. This, according to prosecutors, was a mockery of his ideological beliefs.
In 10 years, 82 criminal cases related to the events of the Revolution of Dignity were instituted in Ukraine. As of November 2023, 40 verdicts were handed down in Maidan cases, 49 people were convicted.
- On November 21, 2013, Euromaidan began in Ukraine, after Viktor Yanukovych stopped preparations for signing the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. The protests turned into anti-government protests and gained a larger scale after the police dispersed the students on November 30. In February 2014, the shooting of demonstrators led to the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime.
- The Euromaidan events were called the Revolution of Dignity, and the dead were called the Heavenly Hundred. According to the prosecutorʼs office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 107 people died during the revolution. Another 2.5 thousand people were injured.