An indictment of an Interior Ministry colonel who failed to take measures to stop the abuse of Maidan activist Mykhailo Havryliuk during protest rallies in Kyiv in January 2014, has been sent to the Pechersky district court in Kyiv.
“It has been established that on Jan. 22, 2014, during the peaceful protest rallies in the center of Kyiv the official, protecting the public order, failed to carry out his duties and didn’t stop crimes being committed by other law enforcers against the participant in protest rallies Havryliuk, and a volunteer from a medical brigade, although he could and had to stop them,” reads the statement posted on the website of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (PGO) on Jan. 17.
The PGO also stated that previously, the court had convicted four law enforcement agents of committing crimes against Havryliuk.
As reported, in January 2014, a video which showed people in interior troops uniform abusing a man, who was stripped naked in freezing temperatures on Hrushevskoho Street in Kyiv, was posted on the Internet. There were bruises on the activist’s body. At the end of the video, the man was pushed into a bus. The video was filmed on Jan. 23, when the temperature in Kyiv didn’t exceed minus eight degrees Celsius.
On Feb. 26, four policemen confessed they had tortured Havryliuk. Later, one of the accused was sentenced to three years in prison and a one-year probation, another one – to two years in prison with the same probation period, “which corresponded with the extent of the punishment that had been agreed upon in the conciliation agreement with the aggrieved person.” In addition, the court suspended both from duty for a year.
In October 2014, Havryliuk was elected to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
