Investigators Identify 17 Torturers Who Abused Ukrainian Prisoners in Donetsk Region. Video

Law enforcement officers identified 17 people who had abused Ukrainian prisoners in the Donetsk region, the National Police of Ukraine reports.

According to case files, the illegal “ministry of state security” and “Kalinin penal colony No. 27” became the part of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” in 2014. The punitive bodies aimed to eliminate Ukrainians.

“Illegal arrests and kidnappings, torture and detention in inhumane conditions are the features of their terrorist activities for not recognising the so-called ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and cooperating with the Ukrainian authorities. In order to force them to plead guilty of espionage and other fictitious ‘crimes,’ prisoners were buried alive, mock executions were staged, they were threatened with torture and murder of close relatives, wives, and children,” said Dmytro Shevchuk, an investigator of the Main Investigative Department of the National Police.

The list of atrocities to which terrorists subjected Ukrainians was shocking, he noted.

“This is torture with electric current, systematic beatings, violent acts of sexual nature, burning of skin, gunshot wounds to hands and feet, cutting teeth, pulling out nails, cutting out genitals… And all that was accompanied by psychological pressure,” Shevchuk emphasised.

It is reported that, in addition to Russians, the citizens of Ukraine, traitors, who stayed in the temporarily occupied territory and sided with the enemy, joined the ranks of the punitive bodies. During the torture, they usually hid their faces and did not address each other by name, so the victims often could not recognise them. However, the investigators managed to identify 17 people who abused Ukrainians. The representatives of local crime and former law enforcement officers are among them.

All of them are suspected of treason, participation in terrorist activities, and inhumane treatment of civilians and prisoners. They face up to 15 years in prison.

The law enforcement officers published a video with the stories of Ukrainian victims.

Bohdan Marusyak