Ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutskenko, now an opposition leader, said that he didn't drink alcohol on Jan. 10, the day he was beaten by riot police officers. “I didn’t drink alcohol that day,” Lutsenko told Kommersant-Ukraine in the interview.
“Moreover, after prison I
can indulge myself maximum one and a half or two glasses of white wine. I did
not drink alcohol, but in the evening, whenI came home, I took antiprotozoal
medicine, which might contain a certain portion of alcohol,” Lutsenko said. “But I think that in our
country everyone is used to the fact that rich men are always sober, and those
beaten by police are always drunk. Thanks for imputing me a dose “cup of brandy”
rather than “two cases of vodka.”
“The
police want to protect themselves and first of all to develop an old dead myth of
drunk Lutsenko,” he said. “A ‘drunk’ Lutskenko came and
hurt a colonel, beat and left himself unconscious under the fence. This is
logical in terms of the (Interior Minister Vitaliy) Zakharchenko’s agency. For me, this
information attack is not important. Excuse me, but 0.57 ppm (of alcohol), which are imputed
me in the medical opinion, is not a reason for beating unconscious a citizen,” Lutsenko said.
“The question is not
about me,” Lutsenko said. “Four people were taken by ambulance that night. Dozens were injured.
Therefore it is the power system that should be diagnosed.”
Lutsenko also said that the
blood sample is taken automatically from all those coming with open wounds.
“In
the report about presence of alcohol that I was given, it was written that
blood sampling was done at 6 a.m. in the morning. I am sure that at this time no
one drew any sample from me. I could control myself after 2 a.m, so I am sure it
didn’t happen,” he said.
Lutsenko is one of more than a dozen people injured in violence triggered by a Jan. 10 guilty verdict against three men on charges of terrorism for planning to topple a Vladimir Lenin statue in Boryspil more than two years ago. Their defenders say the crime never took place, that the statue had already been removed and police planted evidence to convict the three men of a trumped-up charge.
A court in Kyiv’s Sviyatoshinsky district found the trio guilty and sentenced them to six years in prison – beyond the two years they’ve already spent in pre-trial detention. The verdicts against Volodymyr Shpara, Ihor Mosiychuk and Serhiy Bevza triggered the clash between police and protesters that lasted overnight until 2 a.m. on Jan. 11.
