Vitrenko Attempt Suspects Retract their Confessions

The Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Court is once again in session, going over the case with the explosions in a crowd of voters in Kryvy Rih (October 2, 1999) when seeing off Progressive Socialist leader and presidential candidate Natalia Vitrenko after a campaign rally. The trial began two months ago and was twice adjourned at the request of one of the defendants who claimed he had no time to familiarize himself with the case file. This time the court turned down another such motion and proceeded to hear the case. The preliminary investigation findings supplied by the SBU [Ukrainian secret police] have it that the attempt on Natalia Vitrenko and her campaign agents Deputies Marchenko and Lymar was a conspiratorial crime perpetrated by the three defendants. Documents in the case read that Oleksandr Moroz’s campaign worker, 44 year-old businessman Sergei Ivanchenko, on learning of Natalia Vitrenko’s visit to Kryvy Rih, allegedly offered his brother Vladimir Ivanchenko and the latter’s friend Andriy Samoilenko “a large sum” in return for tossing two RGD-5 hand grenades at her. The alleged conspirators drove to the Palace of Culture of the Inhulets Ore Processing Enterprise where the rally was taking place and decided to toss the grenades just as the Progressive Socialist leader was on her way to the car. The file reads that the grenades were armed by Sergei Ivanchenko, and they put them in their pants pockets, positioning themselves at the left wing of the building. Andriy Sokolov had the nerve to ask Natalia Vitrenko for an autograph. And then there were two explosions in the crowd, one followed by the next, injuring 42 persons. Eyewitness accounts enclosed with the indictment state that some people saw Vladimir Ivanchenko and Andriy Samoilov “make throwing motions” in the dark. The accused were caught by the militia red-handed thanks to certain courageous citizens. The very next day, on October 3, both friends gave their first testimonies.

Sergei Ivanchenko left Kryvy Rih and Ukraine unimpeded. He went to visit with his parents in Rostov oblast, Russia, due to what he explains as family circumstances and adamantly rejects any involvement in or with the explosions. He says he was afraid to return to Ukraine after he learned about his brother’s arrest, but was apprehended in Moscow three moths later. The investigators, relying on his brother’s testimony and that of his friend, consider Ivanchenko a participant in the attempt.

Tracing the grenades, the investigators came up with the assumption that Sergei Ivanchenko, his brother, and two other defendants, driver Oleksandr Afanasiev and butcher Ivan Nedvyha, were involved in smuggling or illegally possessing arms and munitions. The case shows that a large cache was discovered when searching Sergei Ivanchenko’s home at the village of Lozovatka near Kryvy Rih in October 1999. The weapons in the cache had been allegedly purchased in Russia and smuggled into Ukraine beginning in 1997.

Moreover, attempts are being made to accuse Sergei Ivanchenko of inciting arson three years at a garage where his rivals kept equipment and sausages. In January 1999, the conspirators allegedly tried to set fire to the administrative building of a market association. The investigators refer to the defendants testimonies made during the course of pretrial investigation.

Natalia Vitrenko still hopes to learn who put out the contract. She persists in regarding Ivanchenko as a pawn, expecting SBU Derkach Leonid Derkach to participate in the trial.

Court questioning of the defendants immediately provoked sensational statements. Two Russian citizens, Vladimir Ivanchenko and Andrei Samoilov, indicted for committing this crime, recanted the testimony they had given during the pretrial investigation and said they and their associates had been forced to incriminate themselves by beatings, torture, and moral pressure.

The first to testify, thirty year- old Ivanchenko, explained to the court that on the evening of October 2, 1999, he had thrown a common petard, not a hand-grenade, as investigators insist, into the crowd of voters who were seeing Natalia Vitrenko off after a campaign rally. He was allegedly asked to do so by Natalia Sokurenko, a Kryvy Rih journalist, for $3,000. According to Ivanchenko, he was reassured that if caught by the police he would be released “the next morning,” and “everything will be OK” because “she has good connections.” The defendant does not know who threw the grenade. What made the situation piquant was one more detail: during the election campaign Ms. Sokurenko was one of Ms. Vitrenko’s campaign workers. Ms. Sokurenko herself, who was wounded as a result of the explosions near the Inhulets Community Center, was pronounced the aggrieved party and as far as is known categorically denies these accusations. Explaining his previous testimony, Mr. Ivanchenko said that shortly after he had been detained some plainclothesmen beat him savagely and then he was subjected to torture, which made him lose consciousness. Mr. Ivancheko remembers the faces of some of his tormentors and is ready to identify them at the trial. In his words, he was only allowed to see a defense attorney several days later, and physical coercion stopped only after his transfer to Kyiv. However, the defendant thinks he was further subjected to moral pressure even after this. In these conditions investigators allegedly tried to persuade him not only to confess to a politically motivated attempt but also to say that his elder brother Sergei Ivanchenko, then working in Mr. Moroz’s campaign, had organized the terrorist act. According to Vladimir Ivanchenko, who had asked his lawyer for poison, it is a depressing state of mind that made him write a detailed voluntary confession on December 10, 1999. One of the judges, struck by a highly literary style of this document, called it “a psychological research which even Dostoyevsky would have envied.” Still more concrete and more terrible sounded the words of the 29 year old Samoilov who also claimed his previous testimony had been wrested by force and intimidation. The young man did not deny he had been a drug-addict formerly and was drinking vodka on October 2, 1999, the day when the attempt occurred. Like Vladimir Ivanchenko, he and a group of Vitrenko’s opponents came to attend the rally at the Inhulets Community Center. Yet, he claims he threw no grenades into the crowd, moreover, he took an autograph of Ms. Vitrenko’s a few seconds before the explosion and was shocked by the blast wave. Mr. Samoilov, allegedly panic stricken, ran away, only to be apprehended by two plainclothesmen in a neighboring building’s courtyard, where he squatted burying his face in the hands.

The court audience listened in pin-drop silence to Mr. Samoilov’s detailed description of beatings and tortures. Unlike his friend, the defendant named those who allegedly forced him to offer the evidence required. According to Mr. Samoilov, on regaining consciousness after one of many electric shocks, he decided to confess everything, even arsons and the murder of a butcher and a driver, in order to stay alive pending trial and tell the whole truth.

Meanwhile, Ivanchenko’s and Samoilov’s confessions are virtually the only proof of their personal guilt and implication in Sergei Ivanchenko’s attempt. In addition, the letter of indictment also lists rather contradictory testimony from eyewitnesses (of the “somebody threw something and ran way” kind), as well as expert conclusions about “traces of metal” in the detainees’ pants pockets. What can point to Sergei Ivanchenko’s implication, apart from his brother’s and friend’s testimonies, is only one indirect evidence, the marking on the exploded grenades coincides with that on grenades allegedly found during the third search at his estate in the village of Lozovatka. However, the defendants claim the house belongs to Ivanchenko’s mother, while the estate, with a small sausage factory and warehouses, had been visited by many people.

Out of all his testimony offered during the pretrial investigation, Vladimir Ivanchenko has only confirmed unequivocally that he had bought weapons in Russia three years ago. Nonetheless, he categorically denies his involvement in smuggling arms into Ukraine.

In an interview with The Day’s correspondent, People’s Deputy Natalia Vitrenko said Vladimir Ivanchenko’s petard version was “preposterous.” Nor does she thinks the defendant’s allegations about the implication of Natalia Sokurenko “stand up to any criticism.” The PSPU leader believes all this is “an awkward attempt to duck responsibility.”