Communicated on 10 February 2015
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 659/10
Tamara Lvivna BANDURA
against Ukraine
lodged on 14 December 2009
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Ms Tamara Lvivna Bandura, is a Ukrainian national, who was born in 1947 and lives in Kyiv. She is represented before the Court by Mr I.I. Lozovyy, a lawyer practising in Kyiv.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
Prior to the events in question Mr Anatoliy Bandura, the husband of the applicant, had been a member of the Parliament of Ukraine and director of “Azov Sea Shipping Company”.
On 22 March 2005 Mr Bandura was shot dead. According to the applicant, this murder might have been undertaken in response to his plans to disclose some documents revealing unlawfulness of the aforementioned company’s privatisation in 2003.
On 23 March 2005 the Desnyanskyy District Prosecutor’s Office in Kyiv opened criminal investigations into the matter.
On 1 and 4 April 2005 the police arrested certain Mr M. and Mr K. on suspicion of having been involved in the murder.
Since it appeared that the murder of Mr Bandura had been contracted and paid for by some unidentified individuals, on 14 November 2005 the prosecution severed that part of the case in a separate criminal investigation.
The applicant wrote to the prosecution authorities on many occasions sharing her suspicions as to who might have ordered and financed the murder of her husband. She submitted, in particular, that the Azov fleet had been privatised by the “Donetsk clan” and that, following the change of power via the so-called “Orange revolution” Mr Bandura had decided to reveal some important documents to the new authorities with a view to returning the company into the State property.
On 5 October 2005 the Desnyanskyy Prosecutor’s Office wrote to the applicant that, indeed, the version of Mr Bandura’s murder as viewed by her was considered as a major one. It was established that the privatisation of “Azov Sea Shipping Company” had become possible, in particular, owing to the submission by the interested persons of a forged extract from the company lessees’ meeting to the State Property Fund.
On 23 June 2006 the Kyiv City Court of Appeal, sitting as a court of first instance, found M. and K. guilty of the murder (established to have been ordered by unknown persons) and sentenced both of them to fourteen years’ imprisonment. While K. had never confessed, M. had made confessions during the pre-trial investigation, but had later retracted them.
On 31 October 2006 the Supreme Court upheld that judgment.
The applicant, as well as other members of the victim’s family, complained on many occasions to the prosecution authorities that the investigation of the severed part of the case was remained without progress. The reply (the most recent of which as available in the case file dating 21 October 2009) was that the investigation was ongoing.
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains under Article 2 of the Convention that the domestic investigation into the murder of her husband has been ineffective. She submits in this connection that, while it was established at quite early stages of the investigation that that murder had been contracted and paid for, the authorities failed to undertake any meaningful efforts to establish and bring to liability its organisers and contractors.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Having regard to the procedural protection of the right to life (see paragraph 104 of Salman v. Turkey [GC], no. 21986/93, ECHR 2000-VII), was the investigation in the present case by the domestic authorities in breach of Article 2 of the Convention, in particular, as regards their failure to identify and bring to liability the organisers and contractors of the murder of the applicant’s husband?
The Government are also requested to submit to the Court copies of all the documents pertaining to the investigation in question.
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