Chief executioner at illegal detention facility faces 15 years in prison

Wednesday, 20 December 2023, 15:49

A 15-year prison sentence has been requested by representatives of the prosecution for Denys Kulykovskyi, the former commandant of a detention facility known as "Isolation" in temporarily occupied Donetsk.

Source: Oleh Horbachov, the victim’s lawyer, and journalist Stanislav Aseiev, on Facebook

Quote: "Last week, court debates took place in the case of Denys ‘Palych’ Kulykovskyi, the commandant of the Isolation detention facility in occupied Donetsk, where prisoners are being tortured…

The prosecution has requested a 15-year sentence for him. In my speech during the debates, I urged the court to support the proposed punishment to the highest degree, given the vast scale of war crimes committed against civilians."

Details: The lawyer announced that a court hearing will take place on 22 December 2023, when Kulykovskyi is scheduled to make his final statement, after which the court will retire to the deliberation room to reach a verdict.

For the purposes of transparency, the defence will ask the court to announce the verdict publicly, so that journalists and others following this high-profile case can be present.

Background:

Denys Kulykovskyi, a former militant from the "DPR" (the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic) terrorist organisation and head of an illegal prison known as "Isolation" in the temporarily occupied territory in Donetsk Oblast, was detained in Kyiv by counter-intelligence officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU). The court had ordered his arrest.
Kulykovskyi was served with a notice of suspicion in absentia and declared wanted in October 2020. Law enforcement officers and police investigators gathered evidence of the crimes he had committed. He and his accomplices personally conducted interrogations of prisoners using methods of torture including electrocution, sexual assault, bone-breaking, and simulated executions, as well as live burials involving nails being hammered into the coffin.

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