Police officers charged over the wrongful prosecution of Svitlana Zaitseva

Charges have been laid against the former heads of a criminal investigation unit and of a criminal police department. They are accused of exceeding their authority over the crime committed against over Svitlana Zaitseva. According to the press statement from the Prosecutor General’s website, in September 2000 Ms Zaitseva, under psychological and physical pressure from the police officers of one of the district police departments in the city of Makiyivka in the Donetsk region confessed to a murder she had not committed.  In 2001 she was sentenced to seven and a half years imprisonment, however a year later the real killer was found, and she was totally cleared and released. She returned home, however, with tuberculosis.  She died in April 2006, aged 28, leaving three children.  In November 2007, a Donetsk court awarded 2 million UAH in material and moral compensation to her mother and three orphaned children

The two men accused have been remanded in custody.