Buried alive: police identify 17 torturers who abused Ukrainians in Donetsk region

UKRAINSKA PRAVDA — MONDAY, 18 JULY 2022, 12:57

Law enforcement officers have identified 17 people who abused prisoners of war in Donetsk Oblast.

Source: National Police

Details: In 2014, the so-called "DPR" included an illegal "Ministry of State Security" and "Kalinin Correctional Colony No. 27". According to the investigation, these were "punitive bodies that aimed to destroy Ukrainians". So far, law enforcement officers have managed to identify 17 people who abused prisoners. During torture sessions they usually hid their faces and did not address each other by name, so their victims often could not recognise them. 

Quote: "In order to force them to confess to espionage and other fictitious ‘crimes’, prisoners were buried alive, subjected to mock executions, and threatened with the torture and murder of close relatives and their wives and children. Torture took the form of electric shocks, systematic beatings, violent acts of a sexual nature, burns to the skin, gunshot wounds to the hands and feet, filing down teeth, pulling out nails, and cutting out genitals."

Details: The law enforcement officers also released an excerpt from an interview with one victim: "I was tied to a metal pole face down and electric wires were put on my fingers and toes - they sent an electric current down them periodically for several hours. They poured water over me, beat my feet with rubber truncheons, hit me with a rifle butt, kicked me, and shot me in the leg and bladder. Then they took me to a pigsty and left me there for the night with no shoes, as a result of which my feet got frostbite." 

According to the investigation, there were Ukrainians within the ranks of these punitive bodies in addition to Russians. All those involved are suspected of treason, participation in terrorist activities, and cruel treatment of the civilian population and prisoners. They face up to 15 years in prison.