The Security Service of Ukraine has arrested a top Kherson Oblast official, Vladyslav Manger, on June 16 on the charges of ordering the acid attack on activist Kateryna Gandziuk which led to her death in 2018.
Manger was arrested in the regional capital of Kherson, a city of 290,000 people located 550 kilometers south of Kyiv. He is the head of Kherson Oblast Council.
Manger was initially charged with organizing the murder and arrested in February 2019. He posted Hr 2.5 million bail (nearly $100,000) and was released.
On June 12, prosecutors accused Manger of witness tampering and filed for his arrest without bail. The official claimed he couldn’t make it to the court hearing in Kyiv due to health issues and was hospitalized to a cardiac clinic in Kherson.
But authorities weren’t convinced. On the morning of June 16, Manger was arrested at the clinic and was delivered to the court hearing in Kyiv on the afternoon of the same day.
But as the hearing started, Manger’s lawyers motioned to recuse the judge. As he awaits for the new judge to be appointed and the hearing resume, Manger will not stay in custody. He was arrested only to be brought to the court.
Activists demanded Manger’s arrest for nearly two years. They claimed that, as a target of Gandziuk’s criticism, he was a likely organizer of the attack.
Gandziuk was a prominent activist investigating corruption among Kherson officials. She was attacked with acid on July 31, 2018. She died on Nov. 4, 2018, at the age of 33.
Five perpetrators of the attack on Gandziuk were convicted on June 6, 2019. They received sentences of 3 to 6.5 years in prison.
The police initially arrested a random man as the alleged attacker. The man was released only after journalists proved his alibi.
That, together with a long history of improperly investigated attacks on activists and journalists in Ukraine, undermined the public’s trust in the investigation.
Gandziuk’s family and activists have been demanding justice for her, making it one of the most high-profile cases in the modern history of Ukraine.
The organization of the murder was split into a separate court case.
According to the prosecution, Manger, the head of the Kherson Oblast Council, ordered the attack on Gandziuk, while Oleksiy Levin, an assistant to a local lawmaker, was the one who planned the attack.
On Jan. 24, Levin was arrested in Bulgaria on Ukraine’s Interpol warrant.
Levin, also known under his nickname Moskal after his previous last name Moskalenko, had previously been convicted to 15 years for killing several people along with his father. He was released from prison in 2016.
