Police officers suspected of beating a man to death in western Ukraine were arrested on Nov. 25 after two years of an attempted cover up, according to the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union. More information can be found in an article written by Omar Uzarashvili on the organization’s website: http://helsinki.org.ua/en/index.php?id=1259136693.
It read: “Thanks to the resolve of a high-ranking regional police officer and persistent news reporting from a local journalist, a group of unidentified police officers in Sokal, Lviv Oblast, have been taken into custody and charged with causing ‘deliberate, serious bodily injuries’ and exceeding their official powers following a two-year investigation and uncooperative local authorities who stalled the investigation.”
The human rights organization gave this account: On the night of Dec. 31, 2007, Roman Stasyuk, a suburban resident of Sokal, went with a friend to watch a fireworks show near the town’s centrally located New Year Tree. There they noticed that police were detaining a 20-year man. When Stasyuk approached the police to persuade them to release the young man, police refused and an argument started. Police handcuffed and placed Stasyuk in a police car, where they allegedly beat him to death. A local reporter from the Vysoky Val newspaper looked into the death of Stasyuk after the victim’s relatives contacted him. Based on the journalist’s first article, a forensic medical examination was launched, the human rights group said. That exam showed that Roman Stasyuk had died not of a heart attack, but from rib fractures, blunt injuries and severe shock. On Jan. 27, 2008, prosecutors initiated a criminal investigation into Stasyuk’s death.
