KYIV. March 25 (Interfax) - Anatoliy Matios, deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine and chief military prosecutor, said, citing tentative information, that Yuriy Hrabovsky, a lawyer for Russian citizen Alexander Alexandrov, was shot and killed using firearms.
"I can say tentatively that lawyer Hrabovsky was killed using violence and was shot with firearms," Matios told a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.
He said physical evidence (the clothes of two perpetrators and the money provided for the commission of the crime) was destroyed at the crime scene.
Matios added that everything was done to create the illusion of Hrabovsky's departure from Ukraine to Egypt, and it was reported that he could not return to Ukraine due to persecution and threats, which the military prosecutor said was not true.
"The investigators are now determining what psychotropic substances Hrabovsky was under when he was taken to Kyiv from Odesa, and then was taken to the city of Zhashkov, in the Cherkassy region, where he was killed," Matios said.
Matios mentioned the use of a special bracelet, which was put on Hrabovsky's foot. The suspects in the killing of the lawyer said the abductors told Hrabovsky the bracelet contained explosives, and could be set off if he made any attempt to report being held illegally.
Matios thanked SBU chief Vasyl Hrytsak, for providing the best operatives for this investigation, who once found Alexei Pukach, former head of the surveillance department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, who was convicted in the killing of journalist Giorgy Gongadze in 2000.