Published on 2 April 2024
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 19234/18
Sergiy Grygorovych SHABRATSKYY and Lyudmyla Anatoliyivna SHABRATSKA
against Ukraine
lodged on 3 April 2018
communicated on 11 March 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The case concerns the applicants’ complaint under the substantive and procedural limbs of Article 2 of the Convention about the death of their son, D.Sh., during military service, which was reported as a suicide, as well as the alleged ineffectiveness of the related domestic investigation.
At the time of the events D.Sh. was the commander of a reconnaissance and sabotage squad within Military Unit B2950 “Aidar” fighting, under the command of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, in the east of Ukraine. According to the applicants, he had been accusing his superiors, R. and Y., the commanders of the company and the platoon, to which his squad belonged, of various illegal activities. In February 2015 D.Sh. allegedly gave written testimonies against R. to the State Security Service and applied for protection to the battalion commander, albeit without success.
In early March 2015 D.Sh. allegedly told his parents that he might be killed by or at the instruction of R. and Y. In the evening on 25 March 2015 he telephoned them and shared his plan to pay them a brief visit.
On 26 March 2015, at about 10.50 a.m., D.Sh. died in the premises occupied by his military unit under the following circumstances. After a series of gunshots and a grenade explosion[1] heard from the room shared by D.Sh. with two other fellow soldiers, which they had left shortly before that, he was found dead there. He had a perforating gunshot wound in the head and multiple injuries from a grenade explosion.
On the same date a criminal investigation was launched in respect the incident. On 30 March 2016 it was discontinued for the lack of evidence of a criminal offence: it was concluded that D.Sh. had committed suicide without anybody else’s responsibility having been involved. On 6 June 2016 that ruling was quashed as premature, and the investigation was resumed.
In December 2018 the Lugansk Garrison Military Prosecutor supervising the investigation of the case by the Lysychansk police department, reached a conclusion that the investigation carried out had been ineffective and ordered a number of investigative measures, including: ballistic tests with a view to establishing whether the shells found at the incident scene had been shot from D.Sh.’s gun; a forensic expert examination aimed at establishing gunshot and explosion residues at D.Sh.’s body; verifying whether D.Sh. had applied to law-enforcement authorities in February and March 2015; repeated witnesses’ questioning with a view to clarifying the contradictions in their testimonies, in particular, as regards the sequence of gunshots and the explosion; carrying out expert tests to verify whether D.Sh. had been able to shoot after the grenade explosion in his hands, and so on.
On 4 February 2019 the prosecutor informed the applicants’ lawyer that the aforementioned measures had been or were being carried out. The case file as it presently stands does not, however, contain copies of any relevant reports or other documents.
It appears that the investigation remains pending.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Did the State discharge its positive obligations under the substantive limb of Article 2 of the Convention: firstly, to sufficiently protect D.Sh.’s life, and, secondly, to give a plausible explanation for his death (see Mosendz v. Ukraine, no. 52013/08, §§ 90-95, 17 January 2013, and Nana Muradyan v. Armenia, no. 69517/11, §§ 118-23, 5 April 2022)?
2. Having regard to the procedural protection of the right to life, was the investigation in the present case by the domestic authorities in breach of the requirements of Article 2 of the Convention (see Mosendz, cited above, §§ 94-95, 97 and 114, and Mustafa Tunç and Fecire Tunç v. Turkey [GC], no. 24014/05, §§ 169‑82, 14 April 2015)?
The Government are also requested to provide copies of all the documents related to the investigation into the death of the applicants’ son, which are not yet in the case file.
[1] Witnesses made contradictory statements as to the number of gunshots heard, their sequence in respect to the grenade explosion, as well as the intervals in-between.