A Ukrainian man was yesterday jailed for 25 years for killing his wife in what the prosecutor described as one of the worst murders the country had seen.

After seven hours of deliberation, the jury found 41-year-old Sergeii Nykytiuk guilty of the murdering his 35-year-old wife, Lyudmila, on November 8, 2009 in a block of flats in Ramon Perellos Street, St Paul’s Bay.

The jurors heard how, after a heated argument in which he accused her of having an affair, the accused chased the woman up the stairs of their apartment block. She then fell down a lift shaft where she died a slow, painful death, her body being discovered the next morning

Mr Nykytiuk returned to their flat, lit up a cigarette and drank wine despite his wife’s desperate calls for help.

As the jury’s seven to two verdict was being read out, an unemotional Mr Nykytiuk stood in the dock with his head hung low.

“She would have been 37 last Friday but her husband denied her the right to life and left her to die an agonising and slow, painful death in one of the worst murders the island has seen”, lawyer Nadine Sant, from the Attorney General’s Office, said in submissions on punishment.

Defence lawyer Malcolm Mifsud asked Mr Justice Michael Mallia to show clemency arguing this was not a “cold blooded murder” but rather a murder by omission.

This point was contested by Dr Sant who insisted that “murder is murder”. It was worse than an impulsive split second murder because the victim had to die so slowly knowing full well what had happened to her, she added.

Dr Sant said nothing less than life imprisonment would be doing justice to this case because, as a result of what the accused had done, their two children, aged 10 and 11, would not see their mother again and their father for a long time.

Dr Mifsud said it frightened him to realise and shuddered at the fact that there were people in high places, in important institutions in the country who wanted more than a life sentence.

He said that he did not want to tarnish the victim’s reputation but she was no angel and it had been no mean feat to take her lover to a party where her husband came face to face with him. Her husband’s angry reaction was only natural, Dr Mifsud added.