Kyiv Court Releases Accomplice in Babchenko Case for "Health Reasons"

13 November 2019 20:32

Borys Herman (L) during a court hearing at Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi Court on July 18, 2018.Igor Burdyga / Hromadske

It was a strange case to begin with. Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was killed in May 2018, then resurrected the next day. Then the case got even more complicated with several suspects announced like cofounder of an arms manufacturing company Borys Herman and a mysterious certain Viacheslav Pivovarnik. Now a Kyiv court has released the organizer of the murder.

The fact of the release of Herman – sentenced to 4.5 years in August 2018 – has been reported by Ukrainska Pravda news site that cited Mariana Hayovska, the spokesperson of the Kyiv region's prosecutor's office.

Hayovska claimed that it was because of Herman's appeal to the court.

"He was freed from further service due to health reasons," Hayovska was quoted as saying.

She added that the prosecutors were against such a decision but due to them not having the decision in print, they can't say whether they will appeal it.

Babchenko's murder was famously revealed to have been staged by the Security Service of Ukraine as part of a sting operation aimed at detaining the organizer of the assassination. Governmental bodies later revealed that a number of other journalists and activists were on the hit list of the people behind Babchenko's "assassination."