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17th May 2019: hearing in the Court

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On Friday May 17th five soldiers testified within the defense hearing:
  1. Myokola Balan: deputy commander of the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014, now head of GNU;
  2. Konstantin Rekhtyk: deputy commander of staff of GNU;
  3. Vasyl Kuse: now policeman, in 2014 he was a ranker of GNU on Karachun hill, sharing shift and position with Vitaly Markiv;
  4. Oleksandr Vendiuk: chief of the 1st “Kucynsky” battalion of GNU where Markiv belonged;
  5. Igor Sarakman: soldier of GNU;
The witnesses delivered vague and inconsistent answers to the questions asked both by the defense and the accuse; a crucial node concerns the position of the accused on the Karachun hill: the location detected by the state prosecutor during the inquiries has been substantially confirmed. It came clear that Andy’s and Andrey’s murder was a commonly well-known event among the GNU members on the hill; however none of them was ever heard by the Ukrainian authorities during the local investigations.
Furthermore, the witnesses stated that:
  • no shift sheet is available as an overview of positions and duties of the GNU soldiers on the hill;
  • the GNU soldiers were provided with weapons meant to be used for the sole defense;
  • GNU and regular army occupied the hill side by side but never communicated between each other; however the accused is often portrayed with a couple of radio and a throat mike, a rather clear hint of his role of sentinel and informer of those who maneuvered the mortars;
  • GNU soldiers couldn’t see anything from their location as the vegetation was rather dense;
During the afternoon the audience was asked to leave the court after the Ukrainian group clapped and cheered the defense (“this court is not a theater” said the President of the Court).
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Turning barriers into bridges: let’s hike up with Andy

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May 24th will be Andy Rocchelli’s kill anniversary.

After 5 years since he was killed, there are still many shadows regarding the dynamics leading to his death.
The court trial to clarify what actually happened has been carrying out in Pavia since July 2018.
As Andy’s friends, we have decided to organize an symbolic walk to strongly express the need of get to the truth.
The event is open to anybody willing to join to the whole itinerary or just to part of it.
We will gather by 7.30 AM in Piazzetta Rocchelli (via Razzini, Pavia) where Andy grew up and we will start the walk from there. We will pass by the San Lanfranco graveyard where his body is resting and we will arrive to the Pavia courthouse.
At 9.30 AM will start the 14th hearing of the trial, that is open for anybody who wants to attend.
Step by step, slowly but surely, we must get closer to the truth.
For any additional information, do not hesitate to write to info@andyrocchelli.com and visit andyrocchelli.com
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12th April 2019: hearing in the Court

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On Friday 12th, two witnesses reported on Andy Rocchelli’s and Andrey Mironov’s murder:
  1. Fabrizio Romano: former italian ambassador in Kiev where he resided until fall 2016; he took full charge of the retrieval of Andy’s and Andrey’s corpses and arranged the transport operations from Slavianks to Kiev. His statements have been rather generic concerning the transfer ( that implied a truce-like security channel to be set so that Ukrainian military corps wouldn’t shoot at the Russian driver who volunteered to take the coffins out of Donbass ). Mr Romano confirmed that the case was extensively covered by both Ukrainian and Russian media thus undermining the version reported by the two Ukrainian senators who came as spontaneous witnesses in court (Mr Bogdan Matkivskyi and Mr Andrii Antonyschak meant they learnt about this case once Vitaly Markiv was arrested); Mr Romano recalled his repeated efforts to bring up the case with the Ukrainian authorities during his mandate in Kiev.
  2. Luca Soldati: lawyer and ballistics consultant for the defense. He based his studies upon the Ukrainian rogatory -though vague and incomplete- and upon the autopsy report to infer that splinters rather than direct mortar fire has been the cause of Andy’s death. He deems difficult to link those splinters to mortar bombs. When questioned about Mironov, beheaded, Mr Soldati admitted that must have been mortar fire.
He supposes a cross-fire situation given the different angles of the holes unevenly scattered on the taxi; he admitted he never took in consideration the dynamic of the event: the cab was forced to make a quick U turn to escape from the unceasing shootings coming from Karachun hill.
He has been proved wrong regarding the dimensions of the mortal wounds detected on Andy’s body: mr Soldati was minimizing their size.
He mentioned the fireworks related substances were spotted on Andy’s backpack during the analyses, although it’s seems highly unlikely that fireworks were much in use in Donbass at the time.