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Faceless Berkut riot police beat up Yury Lutsenko and others

11.01.2014   
Lutsenko lost consciousness after being brutally beaten when he tried to intervene to prevent bloodshed in the conflict which arose after the verdict was announced in the gravely flawed “Vasylkiv terrorist” trial

During the conflict which continued through the evening following the guilty verdict handed down in the notoriously flawed “Vasylkiv terrorist” trial, Berkut riot police beat former Interior Minister and then political prisoner, Yury Lutsenko unconscious.

Protesters had blocked the coaches carrying Berkut officers.  It is not clear where the three men were who on Friday were sentenced to 6 years over an alleged plot to blow up a monument to Lenin which had already been dismantled.  The protesters had originally tried to block the bus with them.  Apparently at some point somebody began pushing one of the coaches, at which point the Berkut officers jumped out and began beating those standing nearby.

Lutsenko and at least one other person were injured, Ukrainska Pravda reports. Iryna Lutsenko says that her husband lost consciousness.

The MP says that she and her husband had been trying for an hour to get the truth out of the Berkut officers about their plans.  They had demanded to see the officers’ documents and that they remove their masks.  The officers refused and they got out of the coach, though people outside continued to demand that they show their ID and take off their masks. 

Instead, she says, the Berkut officers began beating people.  Her husband then tried to get between Berkut and the protesters in order, he hoped, , to prevent bloodshed.  They began beating him and only stopped, she asserts, when he lost consciousness.  

He is now in hospital with serious head injuries, though is conscious.

See: 6 year sentences in surreal Vasylkiv “terrorist trial” for details about the trial

From the report by Ukrainska Pravda, photo: Andriy Kovalov

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