Victim of grisly rape dies
KIEV, UKRAINE— An 18-year-old Ukrainian woman who prosecutors say was gang-raped, half-strangled and set on fire in an attack that sparked street protests has died, a hospital official said on Thursday.
Hundreds of people took to the streets earlier this month after police released two of Oksana Makar’s three suspected attackers, whose parents had political connections, reigniting a debate on corruption in the ex-soviet republic.
The two men were rearrested and police were disciplined after the intervention of President Viktor Yanukovich, who sent an investigating team to the town of Mykolayiv in southern Ukraine.
Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko confirmed earlier this month that the parents of at least one of the three suspects were former government officials in the Mykolaiv region.
Aministry spokesman said Thursday that after Makar’s death, all three suspects were charged with murder in addition to rape, the Associated Press reported.
Local media say Makar met two of the three accused in a bar on March 9and later went to the apartment of the third. Reports say she was then raped and one of the suspects tried to strangle her with a cord. Then they wrapped her in a blanket, took her to a building site and tried to set her on fire before escaping.
She was found by a passing motorist and taken to hospital with serious burns. She had both feet and an arm amputated in surgery, according to the reports.