Interpol issued a statement today saying that it had rejected a Ukrainian request to place ex-regime officials, including former President Viktor Yanukovych and former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, on its wanted list for murder.
The international police agency instead issued “Red Notices, or international wanted persons alerts, for four individuals including former President Viktor Yanukovych and former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov,” for financial crimes only.
The alerts are based on a new request by the Ukrainian authorities, as a March 2014 request on charges including abuse of power and murder was “assessed by Interpol as not compliant with the Organization’s rules and regulations and was refused,” the Interpol statement read.
“Red Notices are only issued to Interpol member countries if the requesting National Central Bureau has provided all the information required by the General Secretariat.”
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office accuses Yanukovych and Azarov, along with other regime officials, of plotting the murder of Euromaidan protesters on Independence Square by ordering security forces to open fire on a three-month old demonstration against their leadership.
The massacre of more than a hundred people undermined support for the former President among his own party and he was forced to flee in his helicopter, leaving behind overwhelming evidence of massive corruption in the form of his billion-dollar Mezhigirya mansion – complete with galleon, zoo and classic car collection.
Ukraine’s new government had already faced fierce criticism for failing to gather enough evidence of human rights violations or corruption to obtain an Interpol red notice or support EU sanctions against former regime officials. Serious flaws in their investigation into the Euromaidan killings were exposed in a Reuters special report last October.
So when Ukraine’s Minister for Internal Affairs, Arseniy Avakov, announced that after “argument and explanation” and “months after the submission of a request from the Interior Ministry, Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the Security Service,” Interpol had appointed a special commission to deal with the request, it seemed to represent a major breakthrough.
But the “argument” is far from over. The Minister claimed six people had been added to the list, whereas Interpol list only four.
“On the international wanted list of Interpol (red notice – wanted for extradition to Ukraine): Viktor F. Yanukovych, [his son] Olexander Yanukovych, [former Prime Minister] Mykola Azarov, [former Health Minister] Bogatyreva Raisa , Kolobov Yurii (former Minister of Finance), Dzekon GB (former head of Ukrtelecom),” he posted on Facebook.
For the majority of the day even ex-Prime Minister Azarov did not appear on Interpol’s list, and the organisation responded “either there is no red notice for that person, or the country has requested that the red notice not be made public,” when questioned about his absence by the Kyiv Post.
By late afternoon he had been included, but Yanukovych’s son Olexander and former Health Minister Raisa Bagatyreva still do not appear on the police agency’s list. The organisation has also not issued notices for a number of key regime leaders, including former Internal Affairs Minister Zakharchenko, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine Oleksandr Yakymenko and former head of the Presidential Administration Andriy Klyuyev.
The government will suffer a serious blow to its credibility if its law enforcement arm cannot present a convincing case against Yanukovych and other key figures for the deaths of demonstrators, who have become legend in Ukraine as ‘the heavenly hundred’.
Kyiv Post editor Maxim Tucker can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @MaxRTucker
