Today Minsk court has finished the case of homophobe Dzmitry Lukashevich who stood trial for severe beating of Mikhail Pishcheuski, which resulted in amputation of 20% of the victims brain and his slipping into a coma.
A judge has considered the defendant actions as ‘serious bodily assault by recklessness’ and upheld the previous decision: Mr Lukashevich is to spend 2 years and 8 months in a medium-security penal colony.
The judge failed to to determine that the crime is a premeditated serious bodily assault and did not take cognizance of the state prosecutor’s offer to sentence the defendant to 7 years of imprisonment. Reconsidering the case, he also refused to admit that the crime had been motivated by hatred of gays.
According to Tatsiana Pishcheuskaya, a sister of the victim, Dzmitry Lukashevich never realised what he had done.
“The judge has punished him with all the rigour of the law, he has got the maximum prison term. We agree to it, but if one seeks fair, this law should be amended. I want these guys who beat him to come to a hospital and look at such beaten people, look and them and realise what we are going through now. Because in sober fact, he makes nothing of how hard times we have fallen on. He smiled and sneered; it was clear he was crying with one eye and laughing with the other.”
Pishcheuski’s sexual orientation allegedly became the reason for Mr Lukashevich attacking him in May, 2014. Having realised that the victim was badly hurt Lukashevich and his companions left the scene. The medics found Mikhail Pishcheuski in a critical state. Approximately 20% of his brain had to be cut in the course of a number of surgeries. Mikhail was in a coma for about a month and the hope for his recovery was poor. He underwent several operations and is still in the vegetative state.The charity account details for all non-indifferent people who are ready to help Mikhail are here.
Earlier Tsentralny district court in Minsk sentenced Mr Lukashevich to 2 years and 8 months in prison. Today the case has been reconsidered upon cassational appeal, but the verdict is left unchanged.
Pishcheuski’s family is not going to move to a new trial.
“There is no sense,” they say. “We’d better devote this time to care for Mikhail and raising funds for his rehabilitation.”
After the previous hearing the case, Lukashevich’s relatives attacked journalists covering the trial.
