A former Angus provost has said she would be “horrified” if a Lithuanian man convicted of a brutal murder in Brechin was given a shorter sentence now he has been deported.
Vitas Plytnykas and another man suffocated 35-year-old Jolanta Bledaite in her flat in 2008, before chopping up her body and putting it in shopping bags which were dumped at Arbroath harbour.
Jolanta’s head and hands were found by two girls playing at the seaside.
Plytnykas, 46, who has served less than five years of the life sentence imposed by the High Court in Edinburgh, was deported on Wednesday and will be re-sentenced in his home country.
Ruth Leslie Melville, who was the region’s provost and a Brechin councillor at the time of the murder, said she hoped the Lithuanian court would not treat him more leniently.
She said: “On one hand I am glad that this evil creature is no longer infecting our country by his presence. However, I should be horrified if he were to serve a shorter sentence than was agreed here in Scotland.
“The people of Brechin and Angus were utterly revolted by the depravity of those men whose barbaric treatment of Jolanta meant that Brechin was the focus of global disgust.”
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