Some 150 protesters rallied in Kyiv on Dec. 25 demanding a harsher sentence for Yuriy Krysin, a leader of the group of paid thugs that killed journalist Vyacheslav Veremiy during the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014.
A court in Kyiv gave Krysin a four-year suspended sentence and a two-year probation. Krysin was tried for hooliganism, not murder, having denied that his actions led to Veremiy’s death. The prosecutors plan to appeal the sentence.
Read also: Accomplice in journalist’s murder during EuroMaidan Revolution gets suspended sentence
Veremiy, a journalist for Vesti newspaper in Kyiv, was killed in Kyiv on the night of Feb. 18, 2014, on his way home from work. A group of men, led by Krysin, beat him up with bats and shot him. The journalist died in hospital from his injuries.
The protesters, among them journalists, lawmakers, lawyers, war veterans, and human rights activists, gathered on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square in the center of Kyiv demanding the court of appeal to revoke the sentence that they found too lenient.
One of the protesters, lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem, said that the rally was organized to serve justice when a court fails to do so.
“Four years ago, I couldn’t imagine that we would need to have such a protest,” Nayyem said in a Facebook post, referring to the EuroMaidan Revolution that many hoped would put an end to unjust verdicts and corruption.
Another lawmaker Borislav Bereza, an independent, said that the rally brought together people with very different political views.
“We came because the lawlessness and the appalling acquittal of the murderer provoked a joint reaction – indignation – from all of us,” he said in a Facebook post following the protest.
The prosecution asked the court to give Krysin six years in prison. The judge said that Krysin’s confession of guilt, as well as his two underage children, were considered as factors to soften the sentence. The prosecution will appeal the ruling and ask for six years for Krysin.
The prosecutor in the case, Lyudmyla Hetman, said to the UNIAN news agency that the prosecution didn’t have enough proof to charge Krysin with murder.
Despite the fact that there was a group of at least three men attacking Veremiy, only the man who allegedly shot him is wanted for murder. It is Jalal Aliyev, a resident of Horlivka, whose whereabouts are unknown.
