When the judge called Oleksandr Khomenko to testify on March 9 in the case of his friend’s death in police custody, she had to shout loudly.
The key witness, who was sleeping at the back of the courtroom, snapped awake and took the stand.
“My brain is mush,” a drowsy Khomenko told the judge at the trial of Serhiy Pryhodko and Serhiy Kovalenko, two cops accused of abuse of power and negligence, respectively, on the evening of May 17 last year when Khomenko’s childhood friend, Ihor Indylo, 20, died at a Kyiv police department.
“I can’t remember,” he responded over and again, as the judge repeated the same questions. “I don’t know.”
Khomenko said he had suffered a serious nervous breakdown after his friend’s death following a birthday party last year. He said the stress caused him to have numerous memory lapses and so struggled to put together a logical explanation of what happened.
Indylo’s parents, however, believe that the police leaned on Khomenko, who had accompanied the dead student to the police department, to give testimony that would absolve police officers of blame. Khomenko denies this and said he was being put under pressure by the Indylos.
Indylo’s case brought a storm of attention after his parents and college friends alleged that he had been beaten to death by police.
The case helped raised awareness of the rampant police abuse and violations of human rights in Ukraine, but solving it has proven more difficult than expected.
Indylo had been taken to the Shevchenkivsky District police department in the early evening by Pryhodko after an argument broke out between the dorm guard and a group of students celebrating his birthday.
When in custody, Indylo felt unwell and the police called an ambulance after he fainted. The doctor gave him the all clear, before he was locked up in a cell.
Khomenko was then sent home by the police. But the next morning, Indylo’s parents received a call from the police to tell them their son was dead.
Duty officer Kovalenko is charged with negligence; Pryhodko could face three to eight years in prison for abuse of power, although the victim’s lawyer says he could just be put on probation.
Many believe that Khomenko holds the key to what happened that night – how a healthy young man ended up dead. But his testimony has been patchy and contradictory.
“He [Khomenko] has been suffering from this so called ‘amnesia’ during the entire court process,” Oleksandr Zarutsky, Indylo family’s lawyer told the Kyiv Post.
“This highly contradicting testimony can mislead the court, and the case might be returned for additional investigation to clarify all the circumstances”.
During the March 9 hearing, Khomenko on many occasions contradicted earlier versions of events he described in his original testimony to investigators and conversations with Indylo’s parents.
In his original statement, recorded on tape, Khomenko said that Indylo remained in his field of view all evening, that none of the police personnel used force against him and that he saw the police walk Indylo to the cell and put him on a metal bench.
But surveillance tapes from the police department show that he did leave the building for 10 minutes before returning, and could not know what happened to Indylo during that time.
“Oh, I might have gone out to have a cigarette, but I don’t really remember that,” Khomenko said in court testimony.
Neither could he explain why the position of Indylo’s body changed when he first fainted. The drawings done according to Khomenko’s evidence during the pre-trial investigation show that Indylo fell toward the door, which could have caused him to have seriously injured his head on the desk nearby.
But in the taped statement to prosecutors, Khomenko said Indylo had fallen in the opposite direction and suffered no injuries.
The judge picked up on the discrepancy, and asked how the unconscious man had changed his position. Khomenko responded that he had moved him “slightly” in order to help him come to his senses.
There are also two versions of how Indylo got to the cell. Khomenko’s earlier testimony states that “the policemen walked him to the cell and put him on the bench. But in court, he described how “the policemen dragged him to the cell and put him on the floor.”
Potentially more explosively, Indylo’s mother, Lyudmila, said Khomenko told her after the funeral that Pryhodko had hit her son in the chest.
“You saw them drag him to the cell, you saw he was in trouble – why didn’t you call us?” she asked Khomenko during questioning on March 9.
“I thought everything would be okay,” Khomenko replied.
Oleksandr Plakhotnyuk, a lawyer for policeman Pryhodko, also wants some additional investigation and expertise to examine when Indylo actually died.
Two analyses have given two different answers as to when he received the lethal blow. One placed the time when he was already in custody, the other before.
The trial continues.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olesia Oleshko can be reached at [email protected]
