Infamous Angus head-on-the-beach killer Vitas Plytnykas has sparked fury with a claim he is being poorly treated in a Lithuanian prison cell.
The one-time Red Army soldier was deported to his homeland earlier this year to serve the remainder of a life sentence imposed for the 2008 Brechin murder of countrywoman Jolanta Bledaite, whose body was chopped up by Plytnykas and accomplice Aleksandras Skirda before being thrown into the sea at Arbroath.
There was anger earlier this year when the Lithuanian justice ministry imposed a commuted life term minimum of 25 years, which could shorten the 28-year penalty laid down at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2009.
Plytnykas has now sent a rambling letter from his cell in Lukiskes prison in Vilnius, moaning about life as an inmate without a television or money, and complaining his human rights were breached during his time behind bars in Perth.
He said money and jewellery had not been returned to him a claim strongly disputed by the Scottish Prison Service, which has said all personal belongings were sent to Lithuania when Plytnykas was deported.
Plytnykas, who was jailed in Germany for killing a man in 2001, has said his human rights were breached “hundreds of times” during his time in Perth prison, where he was attacked by fellow inmates and also went on hunger strike.
“I have refused to serve my sentence in your country,” he wrote. “It is only a first impression that Scotland is a fair and rich country. In reality, that’s not the case.”
A former Angus provost who led a campaign which raised £16,000 to send Jolanta’s body home for burial said she was staggered by the “audacity” of the killer.
Mrs Ruth Leslie Melville was a councillor in Brechin at the time of the case and has described Plytnykas as “evil personified”.
“There is no treatment harsh enough for this man after the appalling crime he carried out,” she said. “If this man had been a dangerous dog he would have been put down, and I only hope that he goes on to serve every day of his sentence and is never allowed to return to this country ever again.
“He brought evil when he arrived in our midst and I hoped when he was sent back to Lithuania earlier this year that would be the last we would see or hear from him.”
A former prison visiting committee official, Mrs Leslie Melville said she was “100% confident” the Scottish authorities had treated Plytnykas fairly.
“I am absolutely certain that the authorities here during his time in the Scottish prison system treated him with the respect with which every prisoner is treated, and I am also sure that his property would have been returned with him to Lithuania.
“I know from my experience in the visiting committee role that our facilities are first rate.
“I also know that the prisons in the former Eastern Bloc countries, which I also have experience of having worked there, can be barbaric in comparison to the conditions he would have been in here.”