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It smelled bad. It was the general find. Handcuffed hand and foot for hours, the clothes he wore were soaked in his excrement. “He spoke very quietly, as if he was praying,” said one of the witnesses who saw the man from the east before he died on March 12.
The brutal saga of Ihor Homeniuk, a 40-year-old Ukrainian father of a family, at the facilities of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) of the Humberto Delgado airport, in Lisbon, had begun, however, two days earlier, on March 10 . Like many illegal immigrants, he was seeking a better life. He landed from Turkey, but was not allowed to enter Portugal. From one moment to another, according to the Public Ministry (MP), he complains of “pain in the lower limbs and in the left flank of the abdomen”, having been transferred to the Hospital de Santa María. Nothing was detected. However, he tried his luck and on two occasions refused to return to his home country. On March 11, he returned to the SEF facilities after being discharged. He was a man without dreams on the way to death.
Ihor was agitated. Isolated, he was restrained by two security guards, who put “tape around his ankles.” And that is when the fatal hours for Ihor Homeniuk begin. It was 1:24 am on March 12 when he was administered an anxiolytic. His nerves were on edge. Very agitated, he kept screaming all morning. He even hit one of the guards with a couch on his right foot. Without being able to control it, they ended up calling three SEF inspectors, now accused of qualified homicide: Duarte Laja, Luís Silva and Bruno Sousa. They did not want to leave a trace and, at 8:30 am, they warned the guards: “Attention, they are not going to put our names there, okay?” Duarte Laja had a cane in his hand. One of the guards defined his state of mind: “He hit his palm with the baton.” The three elements entered the room where Ihor was and outside cries of suffering could be heard. Ihor had been handcuffed. The adrenaline took over the three elements, who shouted simultaneously with the victim: “Don’t move”, “shut up”, “shut up”. The weather was bad, a bad result was expected. The guards did not resist, they opened the door leaning against it, but Inspector Duarte Laja prevented any intervention. “This is for no one to see,” he said.
When they left the room 23 minutes later, the inspectors were satisfied: “Now it’s quiet.” And they came out sweaty: “We don’t need to go to the gym anymore.” They left the premises and two guards went to the room where Ihor was, who was “with his ankles tied, handcuffed behind his back, lying face down, and with several bruises on his face and head, which appeared to be serious, and still had “. a trickle of blood running down the nose and red marks on the arms.
Ihor spoke more and more “in a low voice”. At 12:45 pm, one of the guards, Jorge Pimenta, went to the room for the last time and asked Ihor if he wanted to eat. He answered no. And then he spent several hours alone, between 12:45 and 4:48 pm. “He had always been quiet, sleeping,” said Jorge Pimenta. Only around 5:00 p.m. did two inspectors arrive to transport Ihor to the plane. Faced with the state he was in, one of the inspectors asked “what happened.” “He seemed to be choking and trying to expel something through his mouth,” he stressed, also revealing that Ihor had “urinated”.
A short time later, when they tried to put him in a chair to transport him to the plane, the Ukrainian suffered an attack, later collapsed, and the rescue means were activated, which were insufficient. At 5:30 pm, the nurses arrived at the scene, but death was finally declared at 6:40 pm.
Now, nine months after his death, the Ukrainian’s widow and children will receive compensation from the government.
Autopsy reveals bruises
According to the autopsy of the body of Ihor Homeniuk, the Ukrainian died from “violent mechanical asphyxia”, revealing “the existence of several traumatic injuries at the level of the rib cage, which had several fractured ribs, on both sides.”
In addition, the existence of “various bruises” spread over the victim’s body, specifically on the face, torso and extremities, was also investigated.
‘They killed the boy’
The PJ received a series of WhatsApp messages exchanged by various SEF employees and security guards that followed the events that culminated in the death of Ihor Homeniuk. Look, this is it. They killed the guy ”, you can read in one of the messages.
In addition, they also talked about who would be responsible for what happened. “I thought it was something that any of us had done (…) But it was not the fault of any of us, luckily. Let it be the fault of others, ”wrote another member of the group.
