Ukraine’s Shevchenkivsky District Court has rescheduled for Oct.18 the hearing on the criminal case against Yaroslav Tarasenko and Oleksandr Los involving the murder of ex-Russian State Duma Deputy Denis Voronenkov because the jury has not been selected.
“The hearing has been postponed until Oct. 18 because primary and replacement jurors have not been selected. The court said technical issues are the reason for the delay. Meanwhile, acting on a motion from prosecutors, the court extended for 60 days pretrial confinement for the two suspects to Nov. 19,” Kyiv Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) spokeswoman Nadezhda Maksymets said on Sept. 21.
She explained five jurors had been selected earlier, and there should a decision which three are primary and two replacement jurors.
As earlier reported, Voronenkov was shot dead in the center of Kyiv on March 23, 2017. The shooter, Pavlo Parshov, was wounded by the ex-MP’s bodyguard and died later in the hospital. Parshov’s accomplice Yaroslav Levenets has since 2012 been wanted for economic crimes. Tarasenko is also a suspected accomplice. He was detained on July 16. Los and Tarasenko are suspected of organizing the crime, hiring two drivers and the killer. Tarasenko was the driver of the Lanos sedan, in which the killer arrived to the murder.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said that the person who ordered the murder is in Russia and has active contacts with the criminal world and special services. According to him, “those who carried out the killing are mainly citizens of Ukraine.” It later became known that Russian citizen Vladimir Tyurin – the former husband of Voronenkov’s spouse Maria Maksakovaya – was a suspect. He was put on the wanted list in Ukraine in March 2018.
On June 11, the indictment in criminal proceedings was given to Shevchenkivsky District Court, which on June 13 extended for two months the term of detention for Tarasenko and Los, but returned the indictment for revision.
On August 7, the court, following a preliminary hearing, ruled that the case should be opened for trial by a jury.
