KYIV. Nov 2 (Interfax) - The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has accepted for consideration a complaint filed by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovuch on the bias of his country's judiciary and its refusal to investigate attempts to murder him.
An ECHR statement published on November 2 says that the application was filed in October 2015. The court began considering it this fall and asked the Ukrainian government to comment on the claims in writing.
In his application, Yanukovych claims, among other things, that there were several bids to assassinate him in 2014. During one, on February 21, 2014, someone tried to forcibly stop his motorcade bound for Kharkiv. The motorcade had crossed through the Kyiv, Cherkasy, Poltava, and Kharkiv regions and gone through five roadblocks. At the first three, there were attempts to block the vehicles. At the last two roadblocks, the cars were fired upon. Three were damaged, and one escort soldier was injured, the application says.
Yanukovych also claims that also on that day, near a roadblock in Uman, some people fired on a motorcade which was heading to Crimea. "The applicant was not traveling with the motorcades during either of the alleged attacks," the ECHR statement said.
The ex-president also claims that the Ukrainian investigation of him was too long and was "neither independent nor impartial" and that the trial held in his absence was not fair.
Also, Yanukovych said that by condemning him, Ukrainian officials violated the presumption of innocence.