A Ukrainian policeman accused of complicity in a brutal rape is going to stay in pretrial detention after the court rejected an appeal from his lawyer to release him.
The Mykolaiv Regional Court of Appeals upheld an order by a lower court to keep Dmytro Polischuk in custody, the regional prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
On June 26, three men dragged a 29-year-old woman into a car in Vradiivka, a town in Mykolaiv region, drove her to woods near the village of Syrovo, beat her up and raped her. The woman ended up with an open skull fracture, lacerated scalp and face wounds and multiple bruises. She remains in severe condition after two operations.
In talking to an investigator, the victim identified the rapists as two police officers, Polischuk and Sr. Lt. Yevhen Dryzhak. Taxi driver Mykhailo Rabinenko is suspected of complicity beating up the woman.
Polischuk and Rabinenko were arrested on June 30. Dryzhak was not, which caused protests among the local population. He was jailed on July 2, and next day the court in Mykolaiv ordered two months’ detention for him.
Local people say there had been crimes of this kind in the region before but that police, allegedly in a bid to produce upbeat statistics, had failed to investigate them properly and beaten innocent people into giving confessionary evidence.
