You're reading: Probe in student’s death shows disregard for life

Human rights activists demand new probe in death of student while in police custody.

In Ukraine, frying an egg in public and involvement in the suspicious death of a student are apparently worthy of similar punishments from the country’s courts.

On Jan. 6, three young men received three-year suspended sentences for imitating the protest of another activist, who was held in a pre-trial detention cell for three months after frying an egg on the eternal flame war memorial to protest hypocrisy in government spending.

One day earlier, another court handed down a five-year suspended sentence to a police officer involved in the death of student Ihor Indylo while in police custody last year.

Activists Bohdan Tytskyi, Kyrylo Babentsov and Olexandr Lazarenko staged their protest in June against what they said was the unlawful detention of another protester Hanna Sinkova. They were convicted on charges of disrespecting graves.

Two of the men spent three days in pre-trial detention. Meanwhile, the police officers in charge of 19-year-old student Indylo, who died of injuries suffered in custody on May 18, were never detained and even continued to work during the trial.

A fractured skull, internal bleeding, damaged skin on the elbows and fingers, a large bruise near the liver and bruises from the handcuffs – we have seen it all at home when we examined Ihor’s body. All this is from falling from the bench?

– Lyudmyla Indylo, Ihor’s mother

Indylo, a student of Kyiv pedagogical college, was arrested on May 17 by off-duty police officer Serhiy Prykhodko at the student dormitory where Prykhodko also lived.

He was taken to the Shevchenkivsky district police station. The next morning his parents received a call from the college authorities asking them to collect their son’s body from the morgue.

Two autopsies showed different reasons of death. The first said the drunken Indylo died from falling to the floor and fracturing his skull; another showed that he fell from a bench.

His parents, lawyers and human rights activists say strong evidence shows that Indylo was tortured and died from police negligence.

“A fractured skull, internal bleeding, damaged skin on the elbows and fingers, a large bruise near the liver and bruises from the handcuffs – we have seen it all at home when we examined Ihor’s body. All this is from falling from the bench?” said Lyudmyla Indylo, Ihor’s mother.

Video footage, released by journalists on the Internet and confirmed as authentic by police, shows Indylo entering the police station briskly and with no signs of drunkenness at 8:38 p.m. His appearance on the footage changes drastically in just one hour.

According to the police, he passed out as Prykhodko was filling out paperwork. An ambulance arrived, but police say Indylo refused to be checked by the doctor.

At 9:49 p.m., footage shows Indylo dragged to the cell by Prykhodko and left on the floor. For the next hours, the student appears to be in pain, rarely moving and repeatedly placing his hands over his head. The footage does not show how Indylo was placed on the bench but shows him falling from it at 1:23 a.m.

As his cellmate appears to yell out for help, nobody checks on Indylo until after 4 a.m., when he had already been dead for about an hour. Police officer Serhiy Kovalenko touched the body with his foot and poured water on it from a bottle. Only then he called an ambulance, and at 5:14 a.m. the doctor found Indylo dead.

Despite the footage and the condition of Indylo’s body, a criminal case on torture was never opened. Prykhodko was charged with unlawful detention and received a five-year suspended sentence. Kovalenko, who was charged with negligence, was granted amnesty by the court late last year as he is the father of a young child.

Oleksandr Zarutsky, Indylo’s lawyer, has already appealed the court’s decision on Kovalenko’s amnesty and is preparing an appeal on Prykhodko’s verdict.

Human rights activists are calling for a fresh investigation.

“Charging the two police officers with minor negligence when there is strong evidence to suggest that their behavior resulted in Ihor Indylo’s death shows a shocking disregard for human life,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia.

Andriy Didenko of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group said Indylo’s case is a perfect illustration of everything that is wrong with Ukraine’s criminal justice system. “According to internationally recognized practice authorities have full responsibility for those in custody. Yet the investigators and the court want us to believe it was a coincidence and nobody is responsible,” Didenko said.

Indylo’s case is far from an exception, as Ukrainian police officers are widely accused of abuse and torture, yet rarely are they held to account for this brutality.

“So they will try to ignore calls to properly investigate this case,” Didenko said. “The only way this case can be properly looked to is when pressure from the public becomes strong.”

Dozens of students and activists have held protests in recent months demanding a proper investigation.

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