DNIPRO – Dnipro’s Court of Appeal has scheduled for October 3 the second hearing of an appeal by Major-General Viktor Nazarov, who was sentenced to seven years in prison over the crash of an Il-76 military transport aircraft of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the summer of 2014.
Nazarov filed an appeal against the verdict, since he considers himself innocent in the crash of the aircraft, in which 49 people were killed. Representatives of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces supported the appeal. In this regard, the victims’ lawyer, Vitaliy Pohosian, said that all those who gathered outside the court building had been “shocked” by such a decision by defense officials.
“Thus, representatives of the General Staff and the Defense Ministry consider Nazarov to be innocent. They went beyond the powers granted to them by the law,” the lawyer said.
According to him, if the Court of Appeal cancels the verdict of a lower court, the relatives of the victims will lodge an appeal, and if this does not work in Ukraine, this complaint will be submitted to the European Court of Human Rights.
Pohosian also said that, in his opinion, the film shown on the Ukraina television channel “76777: Who Will Answer for the Terrorist Attack?” was “pressure on the court” and “distortion of untrue information.”
According to the lawyer, on Tuesday, September 26, he filed a lawsuit on behalf of relatives against the channel at the Sviatoshynsky District Court of Kyiv regarding the protection of honor, dignity and dissemination of untrue information.
As reported, Major General Nazarov is the only person accused of official negligence, which led to the death of 49 servicemen of the Armed Forces during their redeployment by Il-76 military transport aircraft to Luhansk.
