The Facebook page of Viktor Handziuk, a prominent Kherson doctor is devoted to one single topic, justice. It was his daughter Kateryna, activist and city official who died in hospital after suffering severe chemical burns to her body caused by an acid attack in November 2018. This year on 17 June, she would have turned 35. Instead, she will remain 33 forever, and her heartbroken father has been waiting for justice for almost two years.
Meanwhile, Vladyslav Manher, the head of the Kherson Oblast Council who is suspected of organizing the attack, attempted using his powers in the region to evade standing trial. On the night of 19 June, the Pecherskyi District Kyiv Court eventually ruled to apply preventive detention as a measure of restraint to Manher without the possibility of being released on bail until 28 July. In the given circumstances the news broke out seeming rather like a miracle.
Now, the main question is whether the trial against Manher will succeed and if his local kingdom of corruption in Kherson is going to be destroyed. Up to 19 June, it was very unlikely to happen. Only publicity and society’s attention to the case could have made a difference.
The motion on the new measure of restraint to Manher
On 17 June, Kateryna Handziuk’s birthday, the court hearing on a measure of restraint for Manher was taking place in Kyiv, as it did throughout the entire week. Such a delay was possible due to various legal maneuvers Manher and his defense used. The Prosecutor General Office presented the Kherson Oblast head with the notice of suspicion long ago, in February 2019. The court ordered to take Manher into custody back then, but the measure of restraint included the possibility to get released on bail set at 2,497,300 hryvnias (about $93,263). And the bail was eventually posted. On 27 April 2020, it became known that the pre-trial investigation on Handziuk’s murder was finished. The news sparked a protest near the President’s Office in Kyiv, near Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova’s house, and in the city of Dnipro, despite the lockdown introduced in Ukraine amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The activists blamed the government, and in particular Venediktova for sabotaging the case and that it was too early to end the probe.Read also: New prosecutor-general sabotages “litmus case” for Ukrainian justice
About a month and a half later the news arrived that gave hope for justice in the case - on 11 June newly discovered circumstances made prosecutors continue the pre-trial investigation. The same day Manher saw a motion on changing the measure of restraint for him due to his illegal attempts to press on witnesses threatening them and members of their families.“The current measure of restraint in the form of bail against the head of the Kherson Oblast Council Manher does not fulfill the tasks of criminal proceedings and does not allow to prevent the possible committing of new criminal offenses,” the prosecutor’s office statement reads.However, Manher turned out to be a tough nut to crack as he tried to evade the hearing on his detention by using his influence on regional officials.
The privilege of being a local top-official
As Euromaidan Press previously wrote, in 2018, Ms. Handziuk stood up to regional high-standing official Vladyslav Manher. The equivalent of 1,100 football fields of forest near the city had been set on fire. The burned-out forest could now be cut down and sold, as it often happens in the region. Handziuk believed that the fire filled the pockets of the region’s authorities, who were said to be involved in lumber smuggling, and didn’t mince words in speaking out against Manher. And that was the reason why Manher hired a killer to douse her with a liter of sulphuric acid, Ukrainian investigators had officially claimed. So did Handziuk herself, before she died on a hospital bed following three months of medical attempts to save her life.
“They receive funding from Manher and are completely dependent on him in terms of personnel appointments. That’s why they follow any of his instructions. The head physician [Oleh] Mazuryak, in his retirement years, probably decided that his life had been lived in vain if you had not saved the killer of a young woman by hiding him from justice in their intensive care unit.”Vlasov also pointed out that the judge of the Kyiv Pecherskyi District Court played a significant role in helping Manher as she ordered the local Kherson police to give Manher the motion. It was the management of that police who allowed Handziuk’s killers to escape and detained some random person to charge him with the attack on the activist. As Manher was in the hospital, local police were also guarding the medical facility.
“The thing is that several Kyiv bloggers joked yesterday that they were going to Kherson to cure Manger, who found himself in the hospital as soon as he heard that the prosecutor's office once again wants to send him to a pre-trial detention center,” local activists wrote.Vlasov also stressed that Manher received all the coverage from local institutions with the tacit consent of the Kerson Oblast governor Yuriy Husev who rather prefers to ignore the news around the Handziuk’s case.
“This is what was to be proved: today we are once again convinced that feudalism overcomes power structures in Ukraine,” Vlasov wrote.
The court hearing in Kyiv
Vladyslav Manher (L) and his defenders in court.
Read more:
- New prosecutor general sabotages “litmus case” for Ukrainian justice
- A year after, Ukrainian activists still ask who ordered Kateryna Handziuk
- Activist attacked with acid: “I know I look awful, but Ukraine’s judicial system looks much worse”
- Ukrainian activist attacked with acid dies in hospital. Mandator of murder still not found
- Attacks on civic activists in Ukraine reaching critical level, encouraged by unreformed police
- How the Ukrainian government tries to stop its main changemakers
- Ukraine’s courts are trying to jail a corruption fighter, but a sea of public support is getting in the way
- Odesa corruption fighter charged with murder for defending himself against third armed attack
