You're reading: Portugal immigration chief resigns over alleged murder of Ukrainian national at Lisbon airport

Cristina Gatões, Portugal’s director of immigration and border services, resigned on Dec. 9 after the alleged torture and murder of Ukrainian Ihor Homenyuk by Portuguese border control agents on March 12. 

Homenyuk, 40, was allegedly beaten to death in an airport detention center run by Portugal’s Immigration and Border Services, and three immigration officers have been charged with murder, Portuguese media Diario de Noticias reported on Dec. 10. 

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter on Dec. 10 that Homenyuk’s wife and two daughters, would receive compensation, and said he expects the culprits to be punished. 

“I expect that based on the results of the investigation, the court will establish the appropriate punishment for the culprits,” he wrote.

Scandal in Portugal

Homenyuk did not have a valid visa to enter Portugal and prosecutors said he refused to board a flight out of the country.

The officers allegedly handcuffed him and tied his legs after he became agitated. They are accused of repeatedly punching, kicking and hitting him with an expandable baton.

The emergency services were eventually called in, and Homenyuk was pronounced dead on arrival.

However, questions remained over an attempted cover-up of the murder by immigration authorities. 

Homenyuk’s body was cremated on March 27, 15 days after his death, as it was difficult to send the body due to travel restrictions, but his widow did not have the chance to see the body in person and had to pay 2,200 euros to get the remains of Homenyuk, she told Diario de Noticias on April 13.

If Portugal’s lawmakers had not decided that the body had to be autopsied, the “situation of evident torture” could have passed as “natural death,” and the body would have been cremated without any investigation.

Portugal’s General Inspection of Internal Administration (IGAI) reported an attempted cover-up by the former director of immigration service Sérgio Henriques, dismissed on March 30 in the midst of the scandal after allegedly asked everyone who had been in contact with Homenyuk to make a “convenient version” about his last two days.

According to the IGAI, there was a “generalized attitude of disinterest in the human condition” in “all the players in this case,” Diario de Noticias reported. 

Gatões apparently knew that Portugal’s Judicial Police Homicide Brigade was investigating the death, after receiving an email from Henriques about the situation, but did not react for nine months, nor contacted Homenyuk’s family.

Alleged brutality

Further reports have emerged of police brutality at Lisbon Airport.

An anonymous Brazilian man told local daily El Diario de Noticias in late November that he witnessed widespread abuse while being held in the same airport detention center.

“I saw several people come out of a particular room bruised, destroyed and crippled. Some even had to use a wheelchair. I saw many things similar to what happened to the Ukrainian. They also beat people in the bathroom, where there aren’t any cameras,” he told the paper.

Portuguese Interior Minister Eduardo Cabrita has asked authorities to open a fresh probe into the claims.