“Forensic expert Sergey Iskruk asked the human rights office representative in the Donetsk People’s Republic to help him contact the international organisation over the possibility to record the true results of the investigation into the tragic events that occurred in Odessa on 2 May 2014,” DPR ombudswoman Darya Morozova’s press office reported.
An accord was reached to have Iskruk interviewed by UN representatives to record the expert examination findings.
Iskruk was involved in the 2015 investigation into the mass deaths at the Odessa Trade Union House. As he presented the results of the expert examination into the cause, he came under pressure from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office: initially, he was asked to revise his conclusions, and then physical forces was used on him.
Iskruk, a member of the team of investigators, decided to leave Ukraine for safety reasons after Praviy Sektor extremists demanded that he sign a new version of the expert examination. Speaking at the Donetsk News Agency press centre on 9 August, the forensic expert said for the first time that the mass deaths at the Trade Union House were caused by chemical poisoning.
The tragic events in Odessa unfolded on 2 May 2014. Activists of the Right Sector extremist organisation of neo-fascist ideology together with so-called Maidan Self-Defence activists burnt down a tent camp in Kulikovo field where signature collection was underway in support of the referendum on federalisation of Ukraine and official status of the Russian language.
The supporters of federalisation and anti-Maidan movement took shelter in the Trade Unions House but radicals encircled the building and torched it. The tragedy left 200 people dead and more than 200 injured, according to police. The culprits were never punished, while the injured parties found themselves in the prisoner’s dock. *jk