2024-08-20 23:29:22
A Peruvian court on Monday sentenced a Ukrainian man to nine months of preventive detention after he confessed to murdering and dismembering a Russian woman after consuming ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant from the Amazon.
The murder of Liudmila Lazarenko, 44, by Ivan Kuzmin, 38, has caused shock and drawn media attention in Peru.
“I declare the request of the prosecution for nine months of preventive detention for homicide qualified with ferocity against Ivan Kuzmin to be well-founded,” said the judge of the Court of San Martín, in the northeast of the country.
The crime occurred on Thursday in the Amazonian city of Yurimaguas.
The foreigners – who were friends – were staying at “Dos Mundos,” a center where body and soul healing rituals are practiced, according to the description of the place.
At the hearing, Kuzmin admitted that he attacked his friend while under the influence of ayahuasca and mushrooms. The alleged killer claimed that he acted “to save the soul” of his friend, supposedly possessed by evil forces.
“He is aware that his actions are punishable by law,” said the public defender assigned to him.
The attacker was found completely out of his mind with a knife in his hand in the Russian citizen’s room when he was arrested, witnesses told the prosecution. The body was dismembered.
“They apparently had an argument and, as a result, the man attacked the victim (…)”, Llesenia del Mar, provincial prosecutor of Alto Amazonas, told the Latina television channel.
The director of the healing centre, Pepe Ordoñez, whose premises have been closed while the crime is being clarified, assured the press that the couple were just passing through and denied having given them hallucinogens.
Lazarenko lived in Thailand with her husband and two daughters. She was on holiday in Peru, as was her attacker.
