The Milan Court of Appeal overturned the 24-year prison sentence of Ukrainian soldier Vitaliy Markiv, who was found guilty of involvement in the 2014 killing of Italian photojournalist and his translator in war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Markiv, 31, a former Ukrainian serviceman, was arrested in Italy in 2017 and later sentenced to 24 years in prison by an Italian court.
The appeal court freed Markiv of all charges on Nov. 3.
Markiv will be on his way to Ukraine soon, according to Ukraine’s ombudsman Lyudmyla Denysova.
The case of Markiv has been getting massive public attention in Ukraine and Italy. Ukraine’s officials, including Interior Minister Arsen Avakov arrived at the Nov. 3 appeal hearing.
Markiv has always denied that he had anything to do with the murder.
“The National Guard and the Armed Forces of Ukraine have never targeted civilians,” he said at the Nov. 3 hearing, before the verdict was announced.
The case
Markiv was accused of aiding and abetting the murder of an Italian photojournalist, Andrea Rocchelli, and his Russian interpreter Andrey Mironov, who were both working in Donbas. Rocchelli and Mironov died from mortar shelling in May 2014 near the city of Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast, on the territory then controlled by Russian forces.
Accompanying them was a French reporter William Rogelon who was also hit by the shelling but survived. His testimony was one of the key pieces of evidence in the Italian investigation.
Markiv was a serviceman with the Ukrainian forces in the area of the shelling.
The prosecutor in the case, Andrea Zanoncelli, believes Markiv was an accomplice to the murder. Zanoncelli couldn’t identify Markiv’s motive for the murder.
According to the motivating part of the 2019 verdict, which was available to an RFE/RL reporter, Markiv was on the Karachun Mountain in Donetsk Oblast and had visual control of Zeus Ceramica factory and the rail station, the area where Rocchelli and Mironov were later killed.
Markiv was arrested in June 2017 when he was visiting his mother in Italy. The next day, Italian media ran accusatory headlines like “Killer of Reporter Rocchelli Arrested” and “Killer who was returning to his mother.” Markiv has been behind the bars ever since.
In July 2019, Markiv was found guilty and sentenced to 24 years in prison.
Alleged crime
The prosecution believes that Markiv saw a group of journalists approaching the railway station, and despite there being no indicators of a potential attack, started shooting at the group with an assault rifle, АК74. After failing to hit them, he continued watching them and told his commander where the group was heading to hide. Eventually, Rocchelli and Mironov were killed with mortar fire. The other reporter, Rogelon, was wounded and managed to escape to the car where their driver was waiting.
When giving his recollection of the events in 2018, Rogelon claimed that those were Ukrainian soldiers targeting him and his fellows.
However, when Rogelon described getting under the mortar fire in an interview for Le Monde, a French newspaper, in 2014, he didn’t say whether the shooters were Russian or Ukrainian soldiers.
Markiv’s lawyer, Raffaele Della Valle, pointed out that Rogelon’s testimonies differ, and the later one seems more planned and less genuine. The lawyer believes that the shooters were Russian-backed separatists, whom Rogelon saw in the area.
Rogelon also mentioned that when he was hiding in a ditch, he yelled that the group were journalists and the fire immediately stopped. Valle emphasized Markiv’s group was too far from the scene — nearly 2 kilometres away — to hear him shouting and react.
