The Case Concerning Torture in Izmail Has Been Referred Back for Further Investigation: a Victory for Lawyer Dmytro Yagunov
Attorney Dmytro Yagunov represented the interests of a victim of brutal torture committed in the city of Izmail in September 2018. Despite the large number of witnesses and eyewitnesses to the crime – several men tortured the victim with a bladed weapon in a public place – and despite the presence of surveillance cameras, the group of individuals implicated in the crime spent a long time attempting to evade the criminal liability they deserved, using their own connections within the prosecutor’s office and the police to have the criminal proceedings closed. As a result of the crime, the victim sustained grievous bodily injuries.
Despite fierce resistance from the prosecutor’s office and the police – who even refused to provide the victim and his representative with a copy of the ruling closing the criminal proceedings – the investigating judge, persuaded by the arguments advanced by attorney Dmytro Yagunov, reversed the ruling closing the criminal proceedings. This decision opened a direct path for the victim to apply to the European Court of Human Rights with a complaint about the ineffectiveness of the pre-trial investigation into the attack on his life, under Articles 2, 3, 6 and 13 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
In the ruling, the investigating judge gave a thorough and uncompromising assessment of the pre-trial investigation authority’s years-long inaction:
«It is apparent from the foregoing that the pre-trial investigation authority never once applied to the investigating judge for an extension of the pre-trial investigation term, did not facilitate an effective pre-trial investigation, and did not attempt to establish the truth in these criminal proceedings, thereby confining itself to the single minimum pre-trial investigation term – 12 months – established under the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine then in force.»
«It follows from the foregoing that, notwithstanding the absence of any pre-trial investigation deadlines in these criminal proceedings – which had in fact already expired, and which was precisely the ground on which the investigator closed the criminal proceedings – the regional-level prosecutor considered it possible to quash that ruling as unfounded, while at the same time finding that the pre-trial investigation had been improper and ineffective.»
«Furthermore, the pre-trial investigation authority – the Investigative Unit of the Izmail Police Department of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Odesa Oblast – carried out no proper, necessary or sufficient investigative (search) measures to identify the persons who had committed the criminal offence against the victim.»
The investigating judge also relied on the legal position of the Criminal Cassation Court within the Supreme Court set out in its ruling of 5 June 2025 in case No. 552/6926/23, according to which, in proceedings where the victim points to a specific person as the one who committed the criminal offence against him, the pre-trial investigation authority is obliged, following a comprehensive, complete and impartial examination of all the circumstances of the criminal proceedings, to resolve the question of whether or not a criminal offence occurred and, if it is established that one did, the question of whether or not the elements of a criminal offence are present in the conduct of that specific person, whether the evidence is sufficient to prove his guilt in court, and whether or not there are grounds for release from criminal liability.
This ruling is an important precedent: it documents the years-long sabotage of the investigation into a grave crime by law-enforcement authorities and opens the way to the restoration of justice – both at the domestic level and before the European Court of Human Rights.
Attorney Dmytro Yagunov continues to represent the victim’s interests at all stages of the proceedings.
