The Donetsk court did not spare capital punishment

capital punishment

Yesterday, the Donetsk Court of Appeal sentenced five members of an organized criminal group who committed 10 serious crimes, including robbery and murder in four regions of Ukraine. The court found the three defendants “exceptionally dangerous to society” and sentenced them to life imprisonment. The court sentenced two more who did not participate in the murders to 13 and 11 years in prison. The accusing party explains the severity of the punishment by the fact that “correction of the defendants is no longer possible.” However, none of the condemned admitted their guilt.

At a meeting of the Donetsk Court of Appeal, presiding judge Yuriy Samoilenko read out the indictment, written on 200 pages, for more than four hours (the criminal case in connection with which the criminals were convicted occupied 31 volumes). Three of the five defendants were previously police officers. In relation to the former detective commissioner, reserve police captain Vladimir Zakshevsky and former police sergeant Oleg Sidnevsky, the court chose a punishment of life imprisonment. Sergei Semyonov, sentenced to 13 years in prison, at the time of the commission of the crimes was a senior police lieutenant, operational commissioner for combating drug trafficking of the Dzerzhinsky Department of Internal Affairs of the Donetsk region. Vladimir Tchaikovsky, sentenced to life imprisonment, did not work anywhere, and Igor Koshelev, sentenced to the shortest term - 11 years in prison - worked as a mining foreman at one of the mines. Two of the three sentenced did not receive life imprisonment only because, while acting as part of an organized criminal group, they did not take part in the murders.

The group, whose members were sentenced yesterday, initially consisted of 9 people. Its organizer was a police officer named Byrka, convicted in 2000 for malfeasance. Having decided to create his own group, he began to gradually recruit people from among former and current police officers, as well as civilians who had good physical training, shooting and driving skills. According to the Donetsk prosecutor's office, which investigated the criminal case, the criminal roles of each were clearly distributed. Members of the so-called “Byrka group” committed 10 serious crimes between the spring of 2000 and September 2001 in the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The criminals were engaged in robbery attacks on the owners of exchange offices and other entrepreneurs, mainly on intercity routes. The group is responsible for 8 murders, two more victims received gunshot wounds, but survived. According to the investigation, the attackers took cash from their victims, not even disdaining several dozen hryvnias. The largest amount they managed to take at one time was 64 thousand UAH. The criminals' arsenal consisted of 7 pistols of different brands, 2 Kalashnikov assault rifles of the AK-74 model, grenades, sawed-off hunting rifles and baseball bats. They used traffic police uniforms as a disguise.

The organizer of the criminal group Byrka was killed in November 2001 while trying to be detained by police officers. After this, five gang members were detained over the course of a year. Two more of their accomplices are now wanted, and one hanged himself in a pre-trial detention center in Kharkov. The investigation into the criminal case was carried out from October 2001 to December 2002, then it was transferred for further investigation, which lasted until August 2004. In total, 29 people were recognized as victims in the case. For three of the defendants, the prosecutor asked the court for the highest penalty - life imprisonment.

According to prosecutor Sergei Lisnyak, the severity of the sentence is due to the fact that “correction of the defendants is no longer possible.” Mr. Lisnyak said that the court did not find mitigating circumstances, since during the pre-trial investigation the defendants completely denied their guilt, while each of them tried to downplay their role in the crimes. Towards the end of the investigation, they completely retracted their testimony, despite indisputable evidence of their guilt.

ELENA Kommersant-ZYABREVA, Donetsk; MATVEY K-NIKITIN

Byrka's gang sat down for a long time