You're reading: Nigerian student faces life in prison in suspicious case

 The doorsteps of the local court in the eastern city of Luhansk witnessed an unusual scene on Sept. 12.

 A dozen
people gathered there demanded a fair trial for a 20 year old foreign student
from Nigeria. Opposite them, a group of 5 ultranationalists demanded a death
sentence, despite the fact that capital punishment has been abolished in
Ukraine.

Olaolu
Sunkanmi Femi has spent more than 10 months behind bars in pre trial detention
for allegedly attempting to kill 4 local men with a broken-off bottle neck. If
found guilty, he could face life in prison, in a case which human rights
activists say is a set up. 

On Nov. 5
2011 Olaolu and his friend were coming to their classmates’ apartment when they
saw a group of 6 young locals in the courtyard. The versions of what happened
next vary. Olaolu and his friend’s story seem pretty typical for Ukraine, where
racist attacks are far from being exceptional.

“Olaolu
says he and his friend were drunk, and were coming to their friend’s apartment.
In the yard they were verbally abused by a group of drinking young people who
yelled racist slurs about monkeys, Africa and the like. When Olaolu replied
angrily, some of the group became aggressive, chased them and beat them up,”
says Maksym Butkevych, coordinator of the No Borders human rights center, which
is monitoring the case.

His
friend fell on the ground, but Olaolu tried to defend himself with the neck of
a bottle – all that was left from a broken whiskey bottle he was taking to his
friend’s.

The
locals’ side of the story is exactly the opposite. Dmytro Lemenchuk says he was
attacked by Olaolu for no reason when he was leaving the building. As his
friends – Artem Loboda, Vitali Gaman and Inna Pashkova rushed to the rescue,
they were all attacked by Olaolu as well – beaten and cut with the bottle neck.

The
prosecutor claims Olaolu was running after each of his victims with the
bottleneck and threatening to kill them.

Why would
Olaolu do something like this? “For the reasons
of obvious disrespect for the society,” reads the official accusation.

Olaolu Femi during the trial.

However,
during the last court hearing on Sept. 12 Vitali Gaman and Artem Loboda changed
the details of his story and Artem Loboda claimed he did not remember most of
what happened that evening.

Olaolu was arrested the next day and accused of attempted murder of 4
people. Since then, he has been in pre trial detention and missed his final
year in Luhansk State University. Since the prosecutor did not assign an
English interpreter to the case – a common problem in cases involving
foreigners – the hearing was postponed for months and Olaolu was not able to
understand all the details of what was going on.    

Aside
from the lack of motive for Olaolu to commit the crime and confused details of
the alleged victim’s testimony, there is another reason for human rights
activists to consider the case a setup.

Dmytro
Lemenchuk, a key alleged victim in the case, is from a family of policemen and
his mother is an officer in the very police station where the case was
investigated.

“She is a
major in the criminal investigation department,” said Tetyana Pogukai,
spokesperson for the Luhansk police. However, Pogukai does not see the conflict
of interest and says “there is no way ordinary policeman could have influenced
the investigation.”

Lemenchuk
and his friends shy away from talking to the press.

Despite
the attention of the Nigerian embassy and media, and a statement from Ukrainian
ombudsman Valeriya Lutkovska, the Luhansk prosecutor sees nothing suspicious in
the case. According to their Sept. 1 statement, none of Onaolu’s victims were
under the influence of drugs or alcohol, “while Olaolu was under both.”

This does
not match the testimony of Loboda and Gaman who said they were drinking beer
that evening.  

The
prosecutor also claims the victims could not have abused Nigerians for racial
reasons since “they lived in the same buildings with foreign students and were
on friendly terms with some of them, and never conflicted with them.”

Dr. Aniki
Johnson, head of the Nigerian community in Ukraine who visited Luhansk says
Olaolu can get a fair investigation and trial only if the public demands it.
“My opinion is that the most he can be accused of is self defense. Instead, he has already spent
10 months in jail and can face a lifetime in prison,” says Dr. Johnson. 

Activists
and African community members have held protests in several Ukrainian cities
and promise more action on Sept.28, the day of the next court hearing. 

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be
reached at
[email protected]