Ukrainian military volunteer and musician Andriy Antonenko (‘Riffmaster’) and his lawyers have applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over what they assert are violations of his right to a fair trial and to liberty. Both Antonenko and pediatric surgeon (and military volunteer) Yulia Kuzmenko remain in detention over six months after their very public arrests and the press conference at which Ukraine’s leaders effectively claimed that the case had been solved. This is despite radical changes to the charges, announced after equally public comments on the case from President Volodymyr Zelensky, and doubts about a lot of the supposedly hard evidence. Unsurprisingly, one of the aspects of the right to a fair trial that the defense has focused on in their ECHR application is the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
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Ex-serviceman of the Ukrainian army Andriy Antonenko attends a hearing in Appeal Court in Kyiv, on Dec. 23, 2019.
