Criminal investigation against yet another Tax Code protester

On 13 January one of the protesters against the new Tax Code, Roman Fedchuk, was summoned to the police where he was officially informed that a criminal case has been initiated.

The report comments that the police officers not only lack experience of erecting tents on Maidan Nezalezhnosti [Independence Square]  but also the basic logic that would tell them that you would have to be mad to try to drive metal stakes into the marble slabs. You would, moreover, have more chance of damaging your metal stakes than the slabs. Nonetheless, Roman Fedchuk is accused of having “during the period from 22.11.2010 to 03.12.2010, together with O. Akhtyrsky, S. Melnychenko, S. Mandych, I. Harzhavenko, O. Zaplatnik and V. Hruzynov, acting by prior agreement with persons not established by the pre-trial investigation, deliberately drove 132 metal stakes into the marble covering of the square”, this supposedly causing damages amounting to 212 thousand UAH.

Unlike those detained on 25 December 2010, Roman Fedchuk was indeed one of the protesters, though by no means a main figure, against the Tax Code and took part in the protests together with tens of thousands of others, and did spend time in the tent camp. However he himself did not erect tents, did not hammer in any metal stakes, and he has never set eyes on most of the people he is supposed to have conspired with.

From a report at Maidan