Prosecutors seek charges against ex-border chief, supervisors in Ihor Homeniuk death case

On March 12, 2020, Ihor Homeniuk, a Ukrainian citizen, died at Lisbon airport while in the custody of Portugal's border police. He had been handcuffed with his hands behind his back and left lying on the ground for more than eight hours. The autopsy would later identify asphyxiation as a contributing cause of death. In May 2021, three border inspectors were convicted of aggravated assault resulting in death for their role in his restraint and mistreatment. Now, prosecutors are moving to charge seven more people.

On July 15, prosecutor Maria Leonor Machado filed a request asking the court to extract a certificate from the conviction and open criminal proceedings against Sérgio Henriques, the director of border operations in Lisbon at the time of Homeniuk's death; two senior inspectors, João Agostinho and João Diogo, who directly supervised the three convicted officers; and four employees of the private security company Prestibel—Manuel Correia, Paulo Marcelo, Jorge Pimenta, and Rui Rebelo. The charges being considered include omission of assistance and, for two of the security guards, aggravated assault. Correia and Marcelo have both admitted, in earlier questioning and in court testimony, that they wrapped Homeniuk with adhesive tape on the night of March 11 into March 12.

The case unfolds in two phases, a division that has drawn criticism as a questionable prosecutorial strategy. The original investigation was split by prosecutor Óscar Ferreira, who brought charges against the three inspectors—Duarte Laja, Luís Silva, and Bruno Sousa—while initially declining to charge the security guards, despite evidence they had restrained Homeniuk. The second phase, now underway, addresses what prosecutors say are crimes of falsifying documents to cover up the incident, though the scope appears broader. The omission of assistance charge carries a maximum sentence of one year; if the person charged caused the dangerous situation, the penalty doubles. For the security guards, the aggravated assault charge carries a maximum of four years and is qualified by what prosecutors describe as circumstances revealing "special culpability or depravity."

During the trial of the three inspectors, Henriques testified that "it is not supposed to leave someone handcuffed for eight hours." Yet he deflected responsibility downward, suggesting that whoever applied the handcuffs bore the duty to check on the detainee and that once he was informed of the restraint, his subordinates should have ensured the person was released or monitored. Agostinho and Diogo similarly attempted to shift blame among themselves. Henriques was dismissed from his position on March 30, 2020, when Homeniuk's death became public and suspicion fell on the three inspectors. He, along with Agostinho, Diogo, and ten other SEF employees, are now under disciplinary investigation by the Internal General Inspection of Administration, the oversight body for police forces. The results of those proceedings have not yet been released.

The two-phase approach has provoked debate among legal observers. Prosecutors appear to have used some suspects as witnesses in the first trial—notably the two security guards who admitted to restraining Homeniuk—in order to secure convictions against the inspectors, then moved to charge those same witnesses afterward. One prosecutor characterized this strategy to the newspaper as "police trickery." The calculation was that charging everyone at once might eliminate potential witnesses for the prosecution; by dividing the process, prosecutors could allow suspects to incriminate themselves on the stand and then pursue charges based on that testimony. Ferreira's original accusation in September 2020 explicitly noted that two security guards had illegally restrained Homeniuk, yet he chose not to charge them at that stage, instead attributing their inaction to a supposed "reverential fear" of the inspectors that prevented them from assisting the detainee or reporting the assault they witnessed.

The case now moves into its second act, with the chain of command facing scrutiny. What remains unclear is whether prosecutors will pursue the enhanced penalty for omission of assistance—the version that applies when the person charged caused the dangerous situation—against the three supervisors who sent the inspectors to "calm" Homeniuk and then, once informed he had been restrained, took no steps to verify his condition or order his release. The fact that Homeniuk remained handcuffed for over eight hours, lying on the ground, was identified in the autopsy as a factor in his death. The supervisors' failure to intervene, despite knowing of the restraint, sits at the center of what prosecutors must now prove.