Yevhen Zakharov: There are grounds for assuming political motives over the situation with Lutsenko
“In the case involving Lutsenko there are a lot of strange elements. It appears as that the law enforcement agencies are being used for political ends”, Yevhen Zakharov, well-known human rights defender said today.
He said that the fact that the people from the Prosecutor General’s office had not shown Yury Lutsenko a warrant to search his flat was a violation of the law. “According to my information, Lutsenko was told that he would be shown the search warrant in the Prosecutor General’s office”.
Yevhen Zakharov adds that it is also unclear in what capacity Lutsenko is being summoned for question to the Prosecutor General. “They should have explained this to him immediately. It’s very strange why this didn’t happen”.
“In general, I believe that whether or not Lutsenko has Israeli citizenship cannot possibly be the subject of a criminal investigation. The same applies to the weapons which Lutsenko supposedly issued. At first you need to carry out an official investigation in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and only then launch a criminal investigation. All of this gives grounds for assuming that the law enforcement agencies are carrying out political orders”, Yevhen Zakharov concluded.
Background
On 20 March Yury Lutsenko’s home was searched by prosecutor’s office investigators. Details are still unclear, or incredible (for example, the investigators appear to have been looking – unsuccessfully – for an Israeli passport). They apparently managed to remove only a medical card, as well as a pistol Lutsenko was awarded, a small amount of money and other documents. Yury Lutsenko reports that no search warrant was presented.
He has been summoned to the Prosecutor General’s office this afternoon.
We have already reported the events last week (cf. http://khpg.org/en/1173985485 , , http://khpg.org/en/1173910501, http://khpg.org/en/1174047688 ) when his rally in Kharkiv was banned.
We will be following these extremely disturbing events very closely.