Monitoring of the case of Yu.V. Rossoshansky (hearing on December 03, 2020)

On December 3, 2020, the Shevchenko District Court of the city of Kiev continued to consider the case of Yuri Rossoshansky, who is accused of the murder of human rights activist Irina Nozdrovskaya. He is charged with Paragraph 4, Part 2, Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Recall that on January 1, 2018, the body of lawyer Irina Nozdrovskaya was found in a river near Kiev, she disappeared a few days before. On January 8, suspicion of murder was announced to Yuri Rossoshansky, the father of Dmitry Rossoshansky, who in September, 2015 beated Svetlana Sapatinskaya, Nozdrovskaya’s sister, to death, and was sentenced to prison for this.

Today, the accused Yu. Rossoshansky faces up to 15 years or life imprisonment.

At this hearing the video of the investigative actions was evaluated.

While watching the video, one can hear that the accused said that he had killed the woman, however, as we know, later (after the investigative actions), at one of the sessions, the accused stated that he gave false testimony due to the fact that he was under pressure from of law enforcement agencies and he does not admit his guilt at this stage.

The defense attorney noted that since during the pre-trial investigation the accused was “promised Article 116 of the Criminal Code (murder in a state of intense emotional excitement),” he invented the circumstances of the crime, hoping that his actions would be qualified in this way. This is confirmed, in his opinion, even by the fact that the possessions of the murdered woman were found in one place, and the way he returned home was completely different. Also, the prosecutor noticed that the video during the investigative actions shows that the accused could not display the way he returned home after the crime was committed. Even Rossoshansky’s description of the belongings of the murdered woman does not coincide with reality. The lawyer also cited a number of proofs that may confirm the invention of circumstances by Yu. Rossoshansky.

In paragraph 108 of the “Ibrahim and others v. United Kingdom” judgment, the ECtHR noted, “… the fact that if the defendant gives false testimony does not in itself prove his guilt. The defendant can lie for many reasons, which may well be innocent in the sense that they do not indicate his guilt. It is assumed here that the false testimony was given for a variety of reasons: out of fear of the accused to admit that he was to some extent involved in the crime or knew about its preparation, but what was said by the defendants is not enough to consider him guilty …”. If the court considers that the false testimony given to the relevant defendants has or may have an innocent explanation, it should not take them into account. Only if we are sure that he did not lie for an innocent reason, can this false testimony be considered as evidence confirming the prosecution’s version, taking into account other instructions that the ECtHR indicated on the issue of interrogation in the interests of security.

That is, in this case, the reason that Yuri Rossoshansky pointed out the false circumstances of the crime can be assumed to be pressure on him from other persons, as well as a promise to mitigate the punishment. If we draw an analogy with the opinion of the ECtHR in the case “Ibrahim and others v. The United Kingdom”, then the video recording can theoretically be declared invalid by the court. When the judge asked whether the circumstances were invented, the accused replied that yes, they were invented for the record.

The victim, in turn, was outraged that during the investigative actions the authorized persons did not even take samples from the crime scene. She claims that Yu. Rossoshansky could not have planned and killed her daughter himself, and this is confirmed by a number of facts. Irina Nozdrovskaya’s mother believes that this is a contract-based organized murder. The woman demands to investigate her daughter’s Facebook correspondence, because she believes that there is all the information about those who threatened Irina, from which it would be possible to understand who could really have committed the murder or contributed to it.

In addition, at the hearing, questions were clarified about the location of the victim’s phone. The prosecutor provided a forensic telecommunications expertise, which was examined by the court at the hearing. Also, the court examined the conclusion of a forensic psychiatric expert, but the defense attorney claims that it has no probative value, because he believes that the described characteristic is suitable for 99% of the population.

At the next hearing, which will be held on December 10, 2020, the court will continue to examine the evidence. The ISHR experts will continue to clarify the details of this case.