EuroMaidan protester allegedly beaten by Berkut dies
LIGABusinessInform has reported the death of 41-year-old Pavlo Mazurenko in a Kyiv hospital. He had apparently phoned friends and told them that he had been beaten up by law enforcement officers “for Maidan”. His friend, Oleksandr Babak, says that a Berkut riot police unit met him on Dec 18 on his way home and demanded his documents.
“Instead of his documents, Pavlo had a photocopy which made them conclude that he was from Maidan, and that his passport had been collected by the monitors there. Saying “We are so sick of your Maidan”, three Berkut officers brutally beat him and left him on the street. He got home by himself where his wife called an ambulance. They came and offered to take him to hospital. Pavlo refused, because it was expensive and he thought he could get by. But he couldn’t, and two days later he died in the intensive care unit of Hospital No. 12”.
Babak asserts that a police captain from the Shevchenkivsky police station arrived at the hospital because the medical documents said that he’d been beaten on Maidan. They took testimony from his wife, Lesya, who explained what had happened. The body was sent for a forensic examination which apparently decided that he had died of pneumonia. His wife and friends are outraged, and plan to find a lawyer so as to establish the truth and find those guilty of the beating which they say caused Mazurenko’s death.