"Losing life or spending it in jail": a choice offered to foreign student by Ukrainian Justice
Appeal in relation to the Olaolu Sunkanmi Femi trial
Twenty-six years old Nigerian Olaolu Sunkanmi Femi arrived to Ukraine in 2007 to pursue higher education. He graduated from the three full courses of Taras Shevchenko National University of Luhansk. This year like his classmates Olaolu Femi was supposed to get a bachelor's degree. But when the other Nigerian students participated in solemn graduation ceremony – he already was in prison for more than six months. Classmates are trying to help his friend, and the rector of Luhansk National University confirms that the University does not abandon its student. However tragic, an incident that happened to Olaolu, can wipe off not only his bachelor's degree, but the whole life. And it certainly might cause doubts among international students who ever considered an option of coming to Ukraine to study.
Femi and his friend Eniola Sudadi will remember the night of November 5, 2011 for their whole lives. This is when they became victims of racially motivated attack commited by five young people at the entrance of a building where an apartment was rented by another Nigerian student. Attackers, fuelled by alcohol, first insulted Nigerians, and later knocked them down, starting to kick and punch them. Eniola was unable to rise from the ground. Only Femi could defend him and his friend, confronting attackers with a broken glass bottle's neck. As a result, three attackers - Vitaliy Haman, Dmytro Lemenchuk and Artem Loboda - received cuts of their hands, necks and heads, and the attackers’ friend Iryna Pashkova, who participated in the incident, received facial and head bruises.
The next day Olaolu Femi was detained, and by the court decision imprisoned in Luhansk pre-trial detention center where he still stays at the moment of writing.
Olaolu Femi was charged under Article 115 Part 2, and Article 296 Part 4 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - the attempted premeditated murder with the motive of hooliganism. According to investigators, he "with the motive of clear disrespect for society" carried out the attack with a prepared crime instrument - a broken glass bottle. Investigators failed to come up with other, more comprehensible and explicable motives of alleged night attack, commited by a Nigerian student against a group of local youngsters. Despite the fact that the injuries received by the attackers were officially considered "light injuries", and the fact that the type of injuries indicate they were inflicted during self-defence, not the attack , - despite all this, Femi is charged with "completed act of" an attempted murder, and therefore might face life imprisonment.
Femi and his friend Eniola Sudadi will remember the night of November 5, 2011 for their whole lives. This is when they became victims of racially motivated attack commited by five young people at the entrance of a building where an apartment was rented by another Nigerian student. Attackers, fuelled by alcohol, first insulted Nigerians, and later knocked them down, starting to kick and punch them. Eniola was unable to rise from the ground. Only Femi could defend him and his friend, confronting attackers with a broken glass bottle's neck. As a result, three attackers - Vitaliy Haman, Dmytro Lemenchuk and Artem Loboda - received cuts of their hands, necks and heads, and the attackers’ friend Iryna Pashkova, who participated in the incident, received facial and head bruises.
The next day Olaolu Femi was detained, and by the court decision imprisoned in Luhansk pre-trial detention center where he still stays at the moment of writing.
Olaolu Femi was charged under Article 115 Part 2, and Article 296 Part 4 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - the attempted premeditated murder with the motive of hooliganism. According to investigators, he "with the motive of clear disrespect for society" carried out the attack with a prepared crime instrument - a broken glass bottle. Investigators failed to come up with other, more comprehensible and explicable motives of alleged night attack, commited by a Nigerian student against a group of local youngsters. Despite the fact that the injuries received by the attackers were officially considered "light injuries", and the fact that the type of injuries indicate they were inflicted during self-defence, not the attack , - despite all this, Femi is charged with "completed act of" an attempted murder, and therefore might face life imprisonment.
