The defense lawyers held their speeches.
Defense of Ukrainian state – lawyer Bertolini Clerici
In his opinion the dynamics of events recounted by the state prosecutor went beyond the 1st grade verdict with creative interpretations. Also Italy should not work on this case at all cause the murder happened in Ukraine. Journalist Ilaria Morani’s article, used by the Italian authorities to detect Mr. Markiv, is not reliable (written in a café). The lawyer mentioned how Ukrainian army never committed any human rights violation as documented by Andy Rocchelli, by many journalists on site and by Human Rights Watch. HRW reports about a ukrainian bombing of a psychiatric hospital in Semenovka to escape which all patients were in the cellar. So nobody got hurt. Anyway Ukrainian army was deployed for defense-only purposes, always targeting things instead of people. Markiv’s defense, lawyer Rapetti:
In her opinion William is an unreliable witness, a boy who doesn’t see the difference between a kalashnikov and a mortar (although he was targeted by one). Ms Rapetti underlined his supposedly being in a state of shock. Slaviansk and Donbass were war zones at the time and Andy and Andrey went there recklessly, unaware of the risk. The autopsy of Andy’s corpse confirmed his death due to metallic splinters, however Ms Rapetti deems as not clear the connection between those and the mortar fire. Hypothesis of cross-fire.The court of justice in Pavia operated therefore inaccurately, far from a scientific approach, neglecting all laws of physics and maths. Markiv’s defense, lawyer Della Valle:
The lawyer mentioned how his speech was crucial to dissipate all rumors and that might have an impact on the court and on public opinion: the president of the court declared that this was a serious offense for the Milan court of justice and for all italian magistrates. The six hours speech can be sum up as: the verdict issued by Pavia court of justice can’t be valid because it was driven by bias, mis-information, the state prosecutor’s conscience problems, fake news and open sources (e.g. Google Earth etc). In order to stop the spread of covid-19, only three journalists were admitted to the courtroom (making shifts) and a plaintiff for each civil part. Ukraine minister of internal affairs, Mr. Avakov, came again to the hearing. The next session will take place on November 3rd.