The Prosecutor General's Office has once again filed a motion to extend Yulia Kuzmenko's preventive measure in the form of 24-hour house arrest.
Once again, the motion simply repeats previous motions that have already been filed repeatedly throughout the trial. The prosecutor does not even try to change the grounds for extending the preventive measure, because he already knows in advance that the court will treat this procedure the same way he does – formally and will grant his motion, leaving Yulia under house arrest for another two months. However, the defense will refute all the prosecutor's arguments each time, hoping that Themis will still hear it someday.
So let's see what exactly the prosecutor repeats over and over again, and why it contradicts objective reality.
1. The prosecutor says: “Yulia Kuzmenko, under threat of severe punishment (up to 15 years of imprisonment or life imprisonment), may be hiding from the court, including in the territory temporarily not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities, because she is a native of the city of Horlivka, Donetsk region, which is currently a territory not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities, may have and/or has relatives or acquaintances there, which gives reason to believe that the latter may be hiding in the specified territory from the court.” However, Yulia Kuzmenko did not travel to the city of Horlivka after the beginning of the military occupation of the territory of Ukraine by Russia, in addition, she is an ATO volunteer and is on the “shooting” lists of the so-called “DPR and LPR republics”. Documents in support were repeatedly provided to both the prosecutors and the court, however, they obviously do not care about common sense and human life.
2. The prosecutor indicates: “Kuzmenko Y.L. repeatedly crossed the State Border of Ukraine”. However, the prosecutors forget to say that Yulia traveled abroad four times in four years – three times for vacation and once for an international conference. At the same time, her international passports, by court order, have been deposited with the State Migration Service since August 2020, and therefore she has no opportunity to travel abroad.
3. The prosecutor notes that the severity of the accusation may affect Yulia and she will begin to evade criminal responsibility. However, since August 2020, Yulia has been released from custody and has been placed under house arrest. During this time, she has not violated her duties. At the same time, at each court hearing, Kuzmenko Yu.L. takes an active procedural position, expresses her opinions on the merits of the issues raised by the court, points out the obvious inadmissibility of the prosecution's evidence, which is being examined by the court, and independently familiarizes herself with the case materials in court. All this indicates that Yulia is ready and will prove to the end her innocence in the murder and the obvious fabrication of the case.
4. The prosecutor says that Yulia tried to influence the experts, who fabricated the only “evidence” for the prosecution. However, back in the fall, the court indicated that in this way Yulia used her right to appeal the experts' decision to the Ministry of Justice.
5. The prosecutor writes: “Kuzmenko Yu.L., having familiarized herself with the materials of the criminal proceedings, possesses information regarding the characterizing, including biographical, data of witnesses, victims, experts, specialists, and other defendants in the criminal proceedings, in connection with which the latter has the opportunity to freely influence the specified participants in the process by means of bribery, coercion, and threats in order to change or refuse their testimony.
Even if we assume this completely absurd idea of the prosecution, there is still not a single witness in the materials who would testify to confirm Yulia's accusation. At the same time, Yulia has been under house arrest for six months, and there was no case of influence or illegal communication with other participants in the case.
6. The prosecutor points out: “In addition, it is worth noting that other participants in the crimes charged against the accused Kuzmenko Yu.L., in particular the organizers and co-perpetrators, remain unidentified at this time, and therefore the accused Kuzmenko Yu.L. may contact them, agree to put pressure on the victims, witnesses, specialists and experts who made a categorical conclusion and identified her as the person who committed this crime. ”And again, for almost 5 years of investigating the crime, the police and the prosecutor's office were unable to find the real killers and instigators, and decided to hang the case on innocent people - this cannot be a justification for restricting Yulia's freedom. In addition, Yulia's lawyer Taras Bezpaly legally challenged the only expert conclusion, which was recognized as having been drawn up with violations.
7. From the first hearing in 2019, the prosecutor refers to a conversation between Yulia and her friend, in which they supposedly discuss the shelling of Kyiv from HRADs. However, the interlocutor was questioned in court, where he testified that this conversation was of an exclusively everyday nature. Moreover, the police ordered a linguistic examination of the conversation, which only confirmed the absence of planning or calls for shelling of Kyiv. Is it necessary to note that the prosecutor is simply inventing the specified information, which is not confirmed by anything, and the court is simply ignoring the real evidence in the case, leaving Yulia Kuzmenko under house arrest.
