Eight young men detained for attacking the Roma camp in Lviv on June 24 night avowed their belonging to the unregistered group ‘Sober and Evil Youth’, Hromadske TV channel has reported.
“The suspects in the attack on the Roma camp in Lviv recognized their belonging to the unregistered group ‘Sober and Evil Youth,’ which used the symbols of the ultra-right nationalist organization Misanthropic Division,” Hromadske said on its website on June 24 evening referring to senior inspector of the Office for the Observance of Human Rights of the National Police of Ukraine Oksana Sanahurska.
According to her, eight young men, who were announced suspicions, are in the district police department with their parents and are giving evidence. They were also given lawyers. All suspects identify themselves as members of the ‘Sober and Evil Youth.’
The police added that the attackers had a clear plan for the pogrom of the Roma camp: they determined in advance the positions of each of the attackers, their actions and tasks.
Chairman of the public organization ‘Roma of Ukraine Ternipe’ Mykola Yurchenko said that the police detained the attackers during the attack.
“If the police came later, perhaps no one would have survived,” he stressed.
Yurchenko also said that there were 10 adults in the camp, among them a pregnant woman, and four children. A pregnant woman was also attacked. After the attack, the gypsies are afraid of the second attack, so they plan to return from Lviv to Zakarpattia, where they came from earlier.
At the same time, Sanahurska said that earlier the law enforcement officers had been ordered to patrol the Roma settlements in a strengthened regime, however, the police did not know about this camp, which is in the forest on the outskirts of Lviv. They managed to quickly come to the place of the attack, as a man who witnessed the incident quickly informed of the attack.
As reported, one was killed and another four injured when unknown individuals armed with knives attacked a gypsy camp on the outskirts of Ukraine’s Lviv, the regional police department said.
A report about the attack was received on June 23, police said. A group of unknown assailants wearing masks attacked the camp located in a forest on the edge of the city, according to the report.
Seven individuals suspected of being involved in the attack have been detained.
Lviv city council member and police officer Ihor Zinkevych said that the victims from the camp were wounded by blade weapons. The people detained by police are aged between 16 and 18, Zinkevych said.
One month ago, on May 23, an armed attack on a Roma camp was recorded in Ukraine’s Ternopil region. It happened in woodland at night. Seven adults and more than 30 children ran away.
Prior to that, on May 9, unknown arsonists set a gypsy camp on fire in Lviv region. Police then launched a criminal probe on suspicion of ‘hooliganism.’
