Rights court holds Ukraine liable for deadly acid attack on activist

Two men received 10-year sentences for organizing the attack. Three years into their appeal, the victim’s lawyer says the hearing is set to start over.(CN) — Europe’s human rights court held Ukraine responsible Thursday for the fatal acid attack on Kateryna Gandzyuk, a Kherson mayoral adviser who said fires in the nearby Oleshky forest were being set to cover up illegal logging.Gandzyuk helped run an investigative news outlet and publicly accused three senior regional officials of shielding the people behind the operation. By the end of July 2018, she was in intensive care. Her parents and partner asked the European Court of Human Rights to hold Ukraine responsible for the attack and for failing to investigate it effectively and independently.The judges found that Ukraine violated Gandzyuk’s right to life on both counts. Private individuals carried out the attack, but evidence pointed to an abuse of the power that came with senior regional office. Individual guilt remained for Ukrainian courts to decide.“The very object of the violence was to interfere with the performance of her public watchdog function,” the court wrote. It found a separate violation of freedom of expression and noted Ukraine’s Parliament had also examined attacks on other civic activists.Ricki-Lee Gerbrandt, a law lecturer at the University of Bristol and a digital speech researcher at University College London, said governments had a duty to protect journalists and investigate threats. “The court confirmed that intimidating abuse against journalists committed by state and private actors chills and silences others from engaging in similar journalistic functions and public participation,” she said.Gandzyuk accused a police official of demanding kickbacks on city contracts. A documentary she helped make about regional council chairman Vladyslav Manger was projected onto the walls of the council building itself. A Ukrainian trial court cited the film and her accusations in explaining Manger’s hostility toward her.The trial court found that Manger enlisted Oleksii Levin, who offered a recruit $5,000 to have Gandzyuk’s arms and legs broken or $3,000 to douse her with acid. The men tracked her routine. On July 31, 2018, one of them poured about a liter of sulfuric acid over her as she got into a car. Levin paid $4,500 after the attack, the court found.The acid burned up to 40% of her body. In a Kyiv hospital, doctors changed her dressings daily under general anesthesia. She told investigators whom she suspected of ordering the attack. On Nov. 4, her heart stopped during morning rounds.Police first treated the attack as hooliganism and arrested a man with an alibi. Ukraine’s security service took over the main investigation the day after Gandzyuk died. Five men were convicted in 2019. Manger and Levin each received a 10-year sentence in 2023 for organizing an attack that intentionally caused serious injuries and resulted in death. Both appealed.Tetiana Pechonchyk, board chair of the Human Rights Centre ZMINA, a Ukrainian rights group that tracked the prosecution, questioned whether prosecutors had adequately considered the possibility that the organizers intended to kill Gandzyuk before dropping the murder charge.“The case also exposes broader systemic weaknesses, including the limited ability of victims and their families to challenge the legal classification of crimes and investigative delays that may result in the loss of crucial evidence,” she said.Investigators questioned the two other officials Gandzyuk had named. But parliamentary reviewers found that phone records were only partly analyzed and that police and security officials failed to share all their material. By August 2024, a separate inquiry had turned up nothing new. The judges found that investigators had failed to pursue that lead thoroughly or promptly.Jaka Kukavica, an assistant professor of constitutional law at the University of Ljubljana, said the judges gave too little attention to the independence of the agencies looking into possible state involvement.“It implicitly affirms that independence of the investigation is not an end in and of itself, but is only relevant insofar as it affects the overall effectiveness of the investigation into allegations of the use of deadly force,” he said.Ukraine is reforming its courts to join the European Union while fighting Russia’s war. Nearly 35% of judicial posts were vacant in April, according to the OECD’s 2026 review.Anna Kalynchuk, a senior attorney at Miller Law Firm who represents Gandzyuk’s father, Viktor, in the Ukrainian appeal, said the war and judge shortage explained some of the delay. The court refused the family’s repeated requests for a firm schedule, she said. Three years into the appeal, the hearing was set to start over in December. If the legal deadline passed before a ruling, she warned, both men could walk free without serving their sentences.As far as Kalynchuk knew, it was the only case since Ukraine regained independence in which a court had convicted the organizers of a fatal attack on a civic activist. Eight years on, she said, the family was still waiting to learn who else might have been behind it.“Kateryna paid with her life for society’s right to know the truth,” Kalynchuk said.The applicants’ lawyer before the European Court of Human Rights and the Ukrainian government did not respond to requests for comment.Either side has three months to seek exceptional review by the Grand Chamber. Once the judgment becomes final, Ukraine has three months to pay 80,000 euros (about $89,900) in compensation and 4,000 euros in costs. Whether Manger and Levin’s convictions stand is still up to the Ukrainian appeals court.Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads