In a tragedy that illustrates Ukrainians’ lack of faith in the current court system, the father of an assassinated businessman detonated two hand grenades during the trial of his son’s alleged killers, killing himself and one of the defendants, and wounding 11 others.
The incident occurred on Nov. 30 in a district court of Nikopol, a city in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, some 527 kilometers southwest of Kyiv.
The father of the businessman, who was assassinated in February 2016, detonated the two hand grenades in the courtroom when the judge ordered the postponement the 21st court hearing of the trial, as one of the lawyers for the defense had failed to turn up.
“When he heard that the hearing had been postponed again, he stood up and threw a grenade at the three defendants. The second grenade blew up in his hands,” Oleg Groz, the chief officer of the Nikopol Criminal Police, told journalists after the incident.
Blown-out windows of a courtroom in Nikopol City Court, where the father of an assassinated businessman detonated two hand grenades during the trial of his son’s killers, killing himself and one of the defendants, and wounding 11 others. (Courtesy of Prikhist)
Groz said that the father died immediately, while the three defendants, a court official, two security guards and several civilians were wounded by shrapnel.
“A total of 11 people were taken to the hospital. One of the defendants died there,” Groz added.
The case concerned a killing in February 2016 in Nikopol, when three people driving two cars blocked two businessmen in a car in the middle of the day in the street and opened fire on them with Kalashnikov machine guns.
Police passed the case materials to the court in August 2016, and since then there have been 21 court hearings, Groz said.
In February 2016 Dnipropetrovsk Oblast police press service reported that police arrested one of the killers on the day of the assassination (Feb. 10) and after identifying him discovered that he had been previously convicted of drug trafficking.
Police suspected that the assassination was part of a turf war in the city among drug dealing gangs.
According to a poll published in October by the Razumkov Center think tank, when asked “Which social institutions of Ukraine do you trust?” 47 percent of the 2,000 respondents said they do not trust the Ukrainian court system, and only 1.3 percent said they fully trust it.
