‘Thank God, I am alive,’ Ukrainian activist says
Member of protest group who went missing says he was kidnapped, tortured
KYIV — Police opened an investigation Friday into the kidnapping of an opposition activist who said he was held captive for more than a week and tortured — the latest in a string of mysterious attacks on antigovernment protesters in Ukraine’s two-monthlong political crisis.
Dmytro Bulatov, 35, a member of Automaidan, a group of car owners that has taken part in the protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, went missing Jan. 22.
Bulatov was found Thursday outside Kyiv. He said his kidnappers beat him severely, drove nails into his hands, sliced off a piece of ear and cut his face. He said he was kept in the dark and could not identify the kidnappers. After more than a week of beatings, he was dumped in a forest.
“They crucified me, they nailed down my hands. They cut off my ear, they cut my face. There isn’t a spot on my body that hasn’t been beaten,” Bulatov told reporters. “Thank God, I am alive.”
Bulatov’s face and clothes were covered in clotted blood, his hands were swollen and bore the marks of nails.
Opposition leader Petro Poroshenko rushed to the hospital where Bulatov was taken Thursday night.
“Dmytro asked to pass his greetings to everyone and to say that he has not been broken and will not be broken,” a grim-looking Poroshenko said. “That he is full of energy and despite the fact that his body has been beaten, Dmytro’s spirit is strong.”
Police said the car he was driving had been found.
After Bulatov went missing, the protesters organized a campaign for his release. They pleaded with government officials for assistance, offered a $25,000 bounty to anyone who could help locate him and even consulted psychics, said Oleksiy Hryt- senko, Bulatov’s friend and fellow activist.
Hrytsenko said Automaidan members had come under tremendous pressure during the protests, with their cars torched and activists detained, harassed and threatened. He showed an Associated Press reporter a text message he had received from an unknown number that read: “Go ahead, go ahead, your mother will be happy to see her son dead.”
Bulatov went missing one day after Igor Lutsenko, another prominent opposition activist, also went missing and was beaten by unknown attackers. Lutsenko was kidnapped from a hospital, where he had brought a fellow protester, Yuri Verbitsky, to be treated for an eye injury. Verbitsky was also beaten and was later discovered dead.
The disappearances prompted an outcry from protesters, who accused the government of intimidating the opposition.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton issued a statement saying she was “appalled by the obvious signs of prolonged torture and cruel treatment” of Bulatov. She also condemned the death of Verbitsky.
“These are but two cases of the continuous deliberate targeting of organizers and participants of peaceful protests,” Ashton said. “All such acts are unacceptable and must immediately be stopped.”
The protests started after Yanukovych backed out of an agreement to deepen ties with the European Union in November, but quickly came to encompass an array of discontent.