Sheremet's Murder Case: Investigation Names Organizer

13 December 2019 17:08

The pre—trial investigation believes that the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet was organized by musician and volunteer Andrii Antonenko.

The pre-trial investigation believes that the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet was organized by musician and volunteer Andrii Antonenko.

This is referred to in the text of the charges to another person involved in the case, Yana Duhar, that was read out in the court where Duhar was chosen a preventive measure of around-the-clock home confinement.

"Andrii Antonenko, fascinated with ultra-nationalist ideas, cultivating the magnificence of the Aryan race, distinguishing society on the principle of nationality, seeking to make his views an object of public attention ... decided to create an organized group to commit murder, ” the charges read.

"To put his criminal plan into action, he sought out individuals who had similar views and intentions to attract the attention of society to national radical ideas that, in their view, could change society," the document follows.

At the same time, there is no information about the suspected presence or absence of a paymaster.

On December 12, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov declared detention of persons involved in Sheremet's case. Minutes earlier, a musician in a band called Riffmaster, Antonenko reported that he was being searched and charged with the murder of the Belarusian-born journalist.

Subsequently, police held a briefing and named five suspects in the murder of Sheremet.

These are military nurse Yana Duhar, a children's surgeon at Okhmatdyt hospital in Kyiv, Yulia Kuzmenko, musician and volunteer Andrii Antonenko, and a couple of Donbas war veterans Inna and Vladyslav Hryshchenko, known by the callsigns "Puma" and "Bucha".

According to the investigation, Antonenko and Kuzmenko were the ones who planted explosives under Sheremet’s car.

Journalist Sheremet died on July 20, 2016 at 7:45 a.m. as a result of a car explosion. He was driving to a morning broadcast of his program. Senior officials have publicly called the investigation into Sheremet's murder a "matter of honor," but for over 3.5 years, despite numerous examinations, questioning more than 1,000 people, seizing 150 terabytes of CCTV footage, no charges had been served officially for the murder until now.

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