Police arrested suspect in murder of lawyer Nozdrovska

The police have arrested a suspect in the murder of human rights activist and lawyer Iryna Nozdrovska, according to the website of the National Police.

According to the report, a man is reasonably suspected of involvement in this crime. He was detained in accordance with the procedure provided for in Article 208 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine. This was stated by the head of the criminal police Vyacheslav Abroskin at the operational meeting chaired by First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Serhiy Yarovyj.

"It is of fundamental importance to fully establish all the events that have occurred. I think that in the near future, we will have all the necessary results of examinations", - Yarovyj said.

Head of the Criminal Police, Vyacheslav Abroskin, noted that law enforcers had managed to reconstruct Nozdrovska’s entire route from Kyiv to the village of Demydiv on the day of her disappearance, including by using a number of technical tools. All shuttle bus drivers who drove along the said route between 17:00 and 18:00 on the said day were identified and interviewed. The police also questioned over a thousand Demydiv residents.

"Using the whole array of these data, we got technical capabilities, interrogations of drivers and found out people who moved from the subway station to Demydiv, we completely reconstructed the picture from 5 to 6pm. Therefore, today the investigators decided that the suspect has to be detained according to art. 208 of the Code of Criminal Procedure", - Abroskin said.

He added that now they are holding active investigative actions and necessary operational-search measures to identify possible witnesses and eyewitnesses who could move along with Nozdrovska. Thus, law enforcement officers will be able to obtain additional evidence on this case. In addition, a lot of forensic examinations have been appointed. The results of the most crucial ones are planned to be received in the near future

In turn, head of the National Police Investigation Department, Vitaliy Nevhad, said that the team was verifying the detainee's testimony regarding his complicity in the crime.

"The investigative actions, the results of the interrogations are being analyzed to confirm the chronology of events, to track her (Nozdrovska’s) route, to prove the motives and the mechanism for committing this crime", - Nevhad noted.

He also added that checking the information received during the investigative actions will make it possible to be sure that the person responsible for the murder has been detained, as well as to prove his guilt.

Serhiy Yarovyj thanked law enforcers for their serious work on this matter and stressed the need to continue working in the "24/7" regime, the report says.

As it was reported earlier, relatives of Iryna Nozdrovska reported her disappearance on December 29th. She disappeared on the way from Kyiv in Vyshgorod area. She investigated the death of her sister, who in September 2015 died in a car accident caused by Dmytro Rossoshansky, the nephew of a district judge, who was in a state of drug intoxication at the time of the accident. Two years after the accident, Iryna was able to obtain punishment for Rossoshansky. At the end of May 2017 the court sentenced him to 7 years in prison, but on December 27 he almost escaped from custody: in the Court of Appeal of the Kyiv region, the lawyer tried to appeal the verdict and bring his client under amnesty, using the violations committed by the court of the first instance. As Irina's relatives said, she constantly received threats from Rossoshansky.