One damning ECHR judgement not enough

As gloomily expected, former Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko’s cassation appeal against his second conviction has been rejected by the High Specialized Court in Kyiv. 

Lutsenko is now a free man and will remain such.  Even had he still been in prison, the rejection of the second cassation appeal would not have affected his term of imprisonment since the second sentence was to run concurrently with the first.

It remains, nonetheless, highly regrettable since the second trial was especially noted by the fact that the supposed “victim” said that he did not consider himself as such, and virtually every witness reiterated that Lutsenko had done nothing illegal.

Yury Lutsenko’s lawyer Oleksy Bahanets called the ruling cynical. 

“How can you say that our arguments were unwarranted?  It wasn’t Lutsenko who organized the surveillance  It was done on a court order. Lutsenko didn’t have anything to do with those measures.”

Another lawyer, Ihor Fomin said that the judges had simply read out the ruling which was supposed to uphold the previous courts’ rulings. They passed judgement without even reading the documents.

Lutsenko’s defence is confident that he will win his case at the European Court of Human Rights. 

His second case since the European Court of Human Rights has already found serious violations of Lutsenko’s rights over his initial arrest and ongoing detention.