Ukraine police 'a risk to travelling England fans'

During the 2012 UEFA football championship between June 8 and July 1, 11 matches will be played in four Ukrainian cities and tens of thousands of football fans will be visiting the country.

But Amnesty has demanded urgent reform of the Ukrainian police after it released documents showing numerous cases in Euro 2012 host cities in which police have tortured people in an attempt to extort money, extract a confession or simply because of the victims' sexuality or ethnic origin.

The latest case involves two men - Ihor Savchyshyn and Andrei Semenyuk - being beaten and robbed by six officers in Lviv on April 21. Lviv will host three matches featuring Germany, Portugal and Denmark during the competition. England play their group matches in the Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Kiev.

Amnesty director for Europe and Central Asia John Dalhuisen has now urged the Ukrainian government to send a clear message that "rights abuses will no longer be tolerated" by publicly committing to the creation of an independent body to investigate complaints against the police.

"The Ukrainian government must take action now to stop widespread police criminality," he said.

"Failure to do so will encourage them to continue acting as a law unto themselves and put Euro 2012 fans in danger from a force that is out of control."

Mr Savchyshyn and Mr Semenyuk lawyer said Andriy Golod said: "Our government claims to be striving towards European human rights standards, but officials live on a different level and ignore human rights. They think they can do what they like with people."