The judgment of the STJ, dismissed the appeal of inspectors Bruno Sousa, Duarte Laja and Luís Silva, validating the previous decision of the Lisbon Court of Appeal to apply, in the same way, the prison sentence of nine years for each of the three inspectors.

The decision of the Court of Appeal, handed down on December 7, 2021, increased the prison sentence applied to inspector Bruno Sousa from seven to nine years and maintained the sentence of inspectors Duarte Laja and Luís Silva, who had already been sentenced to nine years in first instance, so they all ended up sentenced to an identical prison sentence.

In the judgment of the STJ, to which Lusa had access, the judges of the 3rd Criminal Section considered that "the degree of illegality of the facts is high, considering the method of execution, given both the time period during which the attacks (to Igor Homeniiuk) took place, both the suffering that the multiple injuries caused, in addition to the fractures".

"The pain resulting from the injuries is very acute and the choking process was slow", reads more than 500 pages of the judgment.

In the judgment it is also underlined that "the conduct of the defendants still had serious repercussions, since the expectation of citizens in the way of acting of their agents of authority is not that they solve behavioural issues through physical aggression to anyone, but rather that they are governed by the legal norms that they have sworn to comply and enforce".

Thus - says the STJ - the "requirements for general prevention are shown,(...) in this context, to be high", says the STJ.

"We believe that the imposition of nine years' imprisonment on each of the defendants is adequate", says the STJ.