Will the person be prosecuted?
In fact, the right not to testify and not to explain about yourself, one’s family members, and close relatives is enshrined in both the Constitution and the laws of Ukraine. Usually, acquaintances, lawyers, and attorneys advise not to testify using this right.
Law enforcement officers, in turn, are trying to put pressure on witnesses when they take such testimonies, threatening criminal liability for refusing to give it to them, and insisting that they do not ask about relatives or something personal, and their questions relate only to circumstances known to the witness and the question of these circumstances concerns persons who are not their relatives.
Therefore, without the participation of an attorney at law, it is difficult to find out the existence of a real right to refuse to testify.
The European Court of Human Rights, whose practice in Ukraine is mandatory, proceeds from the fact that the accused (suspected) of a criminal offense is a person in respect of whom a pre-trial investigation has actually begun or is being carried out, data on such person has been entered into the plot of the unified register of pre-trial investigations, or to the plot contained in a court decision on temporary access to things or documents, , or in a court decision on a search, or on condition of interrogation of such a person with questions about involvement in a specific crime, arrest of movable and immovable property of this person, etc.
