Western human rights activists demanded that Ukraine answer for secret SBU prisons
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International sent a letter to the Chief Military Prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoly Matios, calling on him to “conduct an investigation into the situation with the possible use of facilities of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) as unofficial places of detention,” reports Kommersant, which has received it even before the official publication turned out to be the text of the document.
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The letter, written by Human Rights Watch Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia Rachel Denber and Amnesty International Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia John Dalhuisen, summarizes the rights activists' findings “based on interviews conducted with five people recently released in Kharkiv.”
“As Rachel Denber and John Dalhuisen report, on July 25, SBU officers in Kharkov released six, and on August 2, seven more people who were included by human rights activists in a list of 18 “unofficially detained persons.” “The SBU officers took them out of Kharkov in the back of an armored minibus, putting black bags on their heads,” the authors of the message claim. “Before they were released, the prisoners were given back their passports and given from 50 to 200 hryvnia “for transportation costs.” The kidnappers warned the detainees about the need to remain silent about their secret detention,” the publication reports the contents of the document.
In turn, Nikolai Vakaruk said that the people who tortured him wore identification insignia of the Dnepr-1 and Donbass volunteer battalions. And Dmitry Korolev reported that he was given a five-year suspended sentence for “leading an illegal armed group,” but exactly on the day of his release—August 3, 2015—SBU officers took him from a pre-trial detention center in Dnepropetrovsk and kept him in the Kharkov SBU until August 2, 2016.
“No one has officially accused our interlocutors of anything. However, if you ask whether they were supporters of the DPR and LPR, I would say “yes,” they do not hide it,” Amnesty International human rights researcher for Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus Krasimir Yankov commented on the situation to the newspaper.
At the same time, the Ukrainian side accuses Western human rights activists.
“Secret prisons are not created by Ukrainians, but by their opponents. Illegal detentions are not our method,” an interlocutor close to the Ukrainian presidential administration told Kommersant.
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