Milan Court of Appeals accepts new translation of Markiv's words proving his innocence

Considering the appeal against conviction of Ukraine’s National Guard member Vitaliy Markiv, the Milan Court of Appeals accepted the conclusions of expert investigation into his statements about the death of Italian photographer Andrea Rocchelli.

According to a new translation of Vitaliy Markiv's conversation with his cellmate in July 2017, Markov did not say "we killed a reporter". Markiv said: "an Italian reporter was killed in 2014 and now they want to put the blame on me," an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

As reported, the prosecution tried to attach to the case files a phrase "killed a reporter" taken out of context and eavesdropped on Markiv's conversation with his cellmate in a pre-trial detention center, which the prosecution was trying to interpret as "I killed." The court granted the prosecutor's motion to examine Markiv's statements allegedly made during the conversation with his cellmate. The Court ordered to carry out a new expert investigation and a complete translation of the whole recorded conversation to understand the context, not just one phrase as requested by the prosecutor.

In the summer of 2017, Ukraine’s National Guard member Vitaliy Markiv was detained in Italy on charges of alleged involvement in the murder of Italian photographer Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian interpreter Andrei Mironov. They died as a result of a mortar shelling at the foot of the Karachun Mountain near Slovyansk town on May 24, 2014. At that time, the territory in Donetsk region was controlled by the militants.

On July 12, a court in the Italian town of Pavia sentenced Ukraine’s National Guard member Vitaliy Markiv to 24 years in prison.

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