Police detain suspects in Sheremet murder case

Police have detained and served suspects in murder of journalist Pavlo Sheremet with the notice of charges.

"National Police have just detained and, with the consent of the Prosecutor General’s Office, served suspects in murder of journalist Pavlo Sheremet with the notice of charges. This is the result of very complicated and persistent work of real professionals and an important step towards full case solving! Thank you for your service,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov posted on Facebook.

He added that investigative activities were ongoing in the Sheremet murder case and the court would soon decide on pre-trial restriction measures for suspects.

Journalist Pavlo Sheremet was killed in the center of Kyiv early on July 20, 2016. The car which he was driving was blown up by an improvised explosive device.

Pavlo Sheremet was born in Minsk in 1971. During his journalistic career, he worked as anchor and producer of Prospekt, a weekly news and analysis program on Belarus state television, editor-in-chief of the Belarusian newspaper Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta, head of the Belarusian bureau of the Russian public television company ORT and an ORT correspondent in Belarus, a special correspondent for the Novosti and Vremya programs on ORT, and chief editor of the Russian and foreign correspondent network of the directorate of information programs on ORT. He served as anchor of the weekly analytical program Vremya. Sheremet often appeared in the media as a representative of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's regime. In 2005, the journalist initiated the creation of the information and analytical website Belarusian Partisan. In the second half of the 2000s, Sheremet also appeared in the press as head of the Partisan Publishing House, which, in addition to his own books, published, in particular, one of the books of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov.

In 2010, Pavlo Sheremet was stripped of his Belarusian citizenship. The official reason stated in the documents was the presence of Russian citizenship, although, according to the press, Belarusian laws did not prohibit second citizenship. He had lived in Ukraine since 2012 and worked for the Ukrayinska Pravda and Radio Vesti.

The journalist was buried in Minsk.

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