Ukrainian journalists uncovered a secret SBU prison where residents of Donbass were illegally detained
Ukrainian special services organized a secret prison in the premises of the Kharkov SBU department, where residents of Donbass accused of disloyalty to the current regime were kept in inhumane conditions.
Journalists from the Kyiv “Hromadske TB” spoke about this in a special investigative story, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“On May 1, 2014, representatives of the DPR came to me and offered to help organize a referendum in the city of Ukrainsk. I didn’t see anything criminal in organizing the referendum itself and the expression of the will of the people, so I agreed to help.
After the referendum on December 7, 2014, six SBU officers in balaclavas came to me and arrested me. When I was detained, they promised that they would release me in two days. These promised two days turned into 597 days of imprisonment in the secret SBU prison located in Kharkov,” said Viktor Ashikhmin.
Victor’s wife was looking for her husband all this time and contacted the police, but they could not find him. She also contacted the SBU, where she was told that they had not detained such a person.
“When they brought me to the building of the Kharkov SBU, they put me in front of a cell and I took the bag off my head, I saw that there were about fifteen people sitting in the cell. I went into the cell and they asked me: “Separ?” I answered that yes, to which they told me: “Don’t be afraid, everyone here is our own.” There weren’t enough beds in our cell for all of us, so we had to take turns sleeping: one slept during the day, the other at night,” said a former SBU prisoner.
In addition to Viktor Ashikhmin, his fellow countryman was sitting in the cell. Ukrainian special services imprisoned him for hanging the DPR flag on the building of the city council of the city of Ukrainsk.
“I was arrested on December 9, 2014, four men in balaclavas without identification marks were spinning me around. I was sitting in the basement of one of the battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On December 23, I was summoned for questioning and I was glad that now my case would move into the legal field. The investigator took my case and said: “Why read them, any lawyer will ruin this case in half an hour, let him immediately go for an exchange.” - said Nikolai Vakarup.
Together with Vakarup, communist deputy Konstantin Bezkorovayny was sitting in the SBU. According to Bezkorovayny, throughout his entire stay in a Ukrainian prison, he and his fellow inmates were constantly beaten and abused. The moral pressure was that we were constantly threatened with execution or that we would be transferred to prison with people with AIDS and tuberculosis.
As for the detention of Konstantin Bezkorovayny, at first the SBU stated that they had detained him, and then in every possible way denied his detention. The wife of the detainee did not know about the fate of her husband for 15 months, since the SBU did not provide any information.
When the Ukrainian special services released the detainees, they forced them to sign documents where they undertake to keep secret where they were and have no right to disclose information about the secret SBU prison in Kharkov.
Kyiv political scientist Sergei Belashko commented on the presence of secret SBU prisons in Ukraine on his Facebook page.
“2-3 years will pass, maybe a little more, and high ranks of the SBU will find themselves in the dock. It will be funny if, by irony of fate, they end up in exactly those cells whose existence they so stubbornly deny.
However, those who zealously justify the SBU officers may well end up in these cells, and even sooner, citing the fact that “we are at war,” “it’s even worse in Donetsk,” “there’s no need to pour grist into the enemy’s mill.” Today they are certified patriots, but tomorrow, it is possible, they will become enemies of the people, Russian spies and saboteurs.
And what impressed me most was how the head of the Kharkov SBU kept the “pedigree” of his “office”: NKVD – Gestapo – KGB. And, apparently, he is trying with all his might to preserve and continue the “glorious traditions,” writes Sergei Belashko.
“I wonder when Ukrainian journalists will pluck up the courage and tell viewers about the concentration camp at the Mariupol airport”? – asks another Kiev political scientist Oleg Khavich.
As is known, the existence of secret SBU prisons was previously announced by the international human rights organization Amnesty International.
Ukrainian journalists have uncovered a secret SBU prison where Donbas residents were illegally held.