The Kyiv Court of Appeals has postponed the hearing of an appeal against the court ruling to remand in custody ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.
The case investigates mass killings of Maidan protesters in Kyiv on February 18-20, 2014.
Having started the appeal proceeding, the prosecutor requested that written objections to the lawyer's appeal and appendices to them on 108 sheets, which substantiate the public prosecutor's opinion to refute the appeal, be included in the appellate proceeding's case file, an UNIAN correspondent reports.
Since the court panel must review the relevant documents and determine whether they are to be attached to the case file, the hearing was adjourned until July 14.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on May 12, Kyiv's Pechersk district court satisfied Ukrainian prosecutors' motion to remand in custody ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych without the right to bail.
The former president is suspected of abuse of power by organizing prosecution and mass killings of protesters in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on February 18-20, 2014.
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Kyiv's Obolon district court on January 24, 2019, applied the "in-absentia" procedure to find Yanukovych guilty of treason and complicity in an aggressive war, and sentenced him to 13 years in prison. However, the court did not recognize as proven the ex-president's guilt in an encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Yanukovych did not attend hearings. After fleeing Ukraine in February 2014, he has found shelter in Russia. The ex-president is also a target of several other criminal proceedings.
On May 4, 2020, Kyiv's Pechersk district court selected a preventive measure for Yanukovych in the form of custody remand in a criminal proceeding dated November 7, 2017, where he is accused of usurpation of power (Part 1 of Article 109 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). This criminal case concerns circumstances of Yanukovych's seizure of state power in September-October 2010 by taking actions aimed at illegally increasing the scope of his authority as president of Ukraine. At that time, the Constitutional Court reenacted the country's 1996 Constitution by recognizing that the Verkhovna Rada violated the procedure when introducing amendments to the Constitution on December 8, 2004, which considerably weakened presidential powers.
On February 22, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada by its resolution reinstated the 2004 amendments to the Constitution.
