A Ukrainian court has rejected a request by a jailed suspect in the high-profile 2016 killing of journalist Pavel Sheremet to be transferred to house arrest.
Kyiv’s Shevchenko district court on January 19 ordered Andriy Antonenko to be remanded in pretrial detention.
Sheremet, a Belarusian-born Russian citizen who had made Kyiv his permanent home, was leaving his apartment to head to the studio where he hosted a morning radio show when an improvised explosive device planted under his vehicle exploded on July 20, 2016, killing him.
Antonenko and two other suspects, Yulia Kuzmenko and Yana Duhar, were arrested in December 2019. Duhar and Kuzmenactuako were later transferred to house arrest.
The three suspects took part in military operations in different capacities in eastern Ukraine, where government forces have been fighting Russia-backed separatists since April 2014.
The Interior Ministry and the National Police have said the group’s goal was “to destabilize the political and social situation in Ukraine” by killing Sheremet.
In January last year, the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office said that additional evidence was needed for the case to go to trial.
A leaked tape published by the Brussels-based newspaper EUObserver earlier this month suggested that Belarusian authorities may be behind the killing.