A Portuguese court sentenced three Portuguese border guards for up to nine years in prison for killing Ihor Homenyuk on March 12, 2020, Portuguese media Diario de Noticias reported on May 10.
Homenyuk, 40, was beaten to death in an airport detention center run by Portugal’s Immigration and Border Services in March last year, when inspectors Luis Silva, Duarte Laja and Bruno Sousa were captured on CCTV entering the room where Homenyuk was being held.
In the footage, Laja has his baton poised.
According to the forensic pathologist who carried out his autopsy, Homenyuk died on March 12 of slow asphyxiation, after sustaining eight fractured ribs.
His limbs had been bound with parcel tape and he was left lying for hours in the airport detention center.
The judge sentenced Silva and Laja to nine years in prison, and Sousa to seven years.
Ongoing investigation
Homenyuk did not have a valid visa to enter Portugal and prosecutors said he refused to board a flight out of the country.
He traveled to Portugal under the visa-free regime allowing Ukrainians to travel without a visa to Schengen-area countries, a common practice for migrants seeking work or asylum in Portugal.
Homenyuk was not offered a phone call, access to a lawyer nor to a Ukrainian-speaking translator despite not speaking Portuguese.
Further investigations are under way into the role played by others, including private security guards working in the detention center who were there during Homenyuk’s detention.
The judge named suspects who he recommended should be further investigated by the Public Prosecution Service.
“There were many people who knew what was happening and did nothing [including] all of those who left Ihor tied up like a package, and those who asked three SEF agents to go in the room where Homenyuk was held, and then did nothing,” he said.
Public outcry
Silva, Laja and Sousa were initially accused of Homenyuk’s murder, but the charge was reduced to manslaughter during the trial, provoking criticism from immigration and human rights organizations.
Questions remain 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.
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.
