Facts

Situation with Babchenko helped obtain list of 47 possible victims

 During an inquiry into an attempt on Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko's life, investigators have legitimately resorted to an imitation of his murder, which enabled to obtain important proof of the detained organizer's ties to Russian security services, as well as more precise information regarding possible targets, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said.

"As a result of this operative combination, investigators obtained a list of 47 persons, who could have been terrorists' next victims. Those are predominantly well-known Ukrainian and former Russian journalists. [...] Today they were notified about their danger and their protection is being organized," Lutsenko said on his Facebook account on Friday evening.

It also emerged owing to those operative measures that after ordering Babchenko's murder, the organizer suggested that the perpetrator, who had acted in cooperation with the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), kill two more people.

"At that, he noted that there is an entire list of more than 30 people, whom Russian security services want to eliminate," the prosecutor general said.

"G.'s [the organizer's] detention before the terror attack would not have neutralized threat to all those people. The imitation of the murder gave an opportunity to obtain additional information about the list and the person who ordered the murder," Lutsenko said.

Such an imitation of a murder complies with the Ukrainian Criminal Procedure Code and "was used over 30 times in the past two years and six months," the Ukrainian prosecutor general said.

As reported, Babchenko's killing was reported in the evening on May 29, but the next day, SBU chief Vasyl Hrytsak said that it was a part of a special operation conducted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and aimed at preventing an attempt to the journalist's life.

The SBU head said that on Wednesday, May 30, the organizer of Babchenko's "murder" was detained in Kyiv. He is Boris German, executive director of the joint Ukrainian-German venture Schmeisser in Vyshneve, Kyiv region. According to Hrytsak, the organizer of the crime prepared to eliminate 30 people in Ukraine on order from Russian security services.

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