Kherson torture allegations mounting
Ukrainian authorities are investigating sites where torture allegedly took place in the city of Kherson. More than two weeks after the Russians retreated, investigators say five torture rooms have been found in the southern city and four more in the wider region.
Ukrainian authorities are investigating sites where torture allegedly took place in the city of Kherson.
More than two weeks after the Russians retreated, investigators say five torture rooms have been found in the southern city and at least four more in the wider Kherson region.
Ukrainians allege that they were confined, beaten, given electric shocks, interrogated and threatened with death.
Human rights experts warn that the allegations made so far are only the beginning.
The ukrainian national police say more than 460 war crimes have been committed by Russian soldiers in recently occupied areas of Kherson.
When a dozen Russian soldiers stormed into Dmytro Bilyi's house in August, the 24-year-old police officer said they gave him a chilling choice: hand in his pistol or his mother and brother would disappear.
He turned his gun over to the soldiers, who carried machine guns and had their faces concealed. But they nevertheless dragged him from his home in the southern village ofCh or no baivka to a prison in the nearby regional capital of Kherson, where he said he was locked in a cell and tortured for days, his genitals and ears shocked with electricity.
"It was like hell all over my body," he recalled. "It burns so bad it's like the blood is boiling ... I just wanted it to stop."
More than two weeks after Russians retreated from the city, accounts such as his are helping to uncover sites where torture allegedly took place in K her son, which kremlin forces occupied for eight months.
Olek sandra mat viichuk, head of the Centre for Civil Liberties, a local rights group, said: "For months we've received information about torture and other kind of persecution ofcivi li ans.i am afraid that horrible findings in Kherson still lie ahead."
Media spoke with five people who allege they were tortured or arbitrarily detained by Russians in Kherson or knew of others who disappeared and endured abuse.
Sometimes, they said, the russians rounded up whoever they saw – priests, soldiers, teachers or doctors – for no specific reason. In other cases, Russians were allegedly tipped off by sympathisers who provided names of people believed to be helping the Ukrainian military.
Detainees were allegedly forced to give information about relatives or acquaintances with ties to the Ukrainian army, including names and locations disclosed in hand written notes.
Ukrainian national police allege that more than 460 war crimes have been committed by Russian soldiers in recently occupied areas of Kherson.
The torture in the city occurred in two police stations, one police-run detention centre, a prison and a privatemedical facility, where rubber batons, baseball bat sand a machine used for applying electrical shocks were found, said Andrii Kovanyi, a press officer for the police in Kherson.
Documenting the crimes in Kherson will be challenging because no other city this large has been occupied by Russia for so long, said Brian Castner, senior crisis adviser at amnesty International.
"Evidence must be collected and preserved to maintain that chain of custody, so that when there is international justice, the evidence is lock-tight and perpetrators can be held to account," he said.