The former commander of the special forces company of the Kyiv Berkut regiment, the so-called “black company”, Dmytro Sadovnyk, was sentenced in absentia by a capital court to 10 years in prison. He was found guilty of destroying the weapon used to shoot protesters in central Kyiv on February 20, 2014.
This was reported by the Prosecutor General's Office on April 8.
Dmytro Sadovnyk is a former Berkut officer convicted of destroying the weapon used to shoot people in central Kyiv in February 2014. Collage from the Prosecutor General's Office
In court, prosecutors proved that the convict played a key role in hiding evidence after the Maidan events. This is a separate episode of the deliberate destruction of the instruments of the crime, the UCP said.
According to the indictment, he, using his official position, organized the removal of weapons from the unit's location. These included, in particular, 24 AKMS assault rifles, a Dragunov sniper rifle, three Fort-500 rifles, and Fort-12 pistols.
“The weapon was destroyed: it was cut up, the markings were removed, after which some of the fragments were drowned in the Vita River – a tributary of the Dnieper, and the rest were buried on the shore. As the investigation established, such actions were aimed at hiding the instruments of crime and making their further identification impossible,” the report says.
The court found the former law enforcement officer guilty of abuse of power and illegal removal of firearm markings. In addition to 10 years in prison, he was ordered to pay nearly 680,000 hryvnia in material damages to the state.