Laurent Brayard

Torture in Ukraine - Harrowing testimony from Journalist Laurent Brayard (Video)

This article and these testimonies were collected by Laurent Brayard on 29 November 2015 in Donetsk. These investigations, carried out in 2015 and 2016, aimed to give a voice to inhabitants of Donbass or Ukraine who had been victims of political repression, torture and exactions by the Ukrainian army, the repression battalions and the SBU political police.

These people had been arrested or abducted, and then after a more or less long period of illegal detention in Ukraine, had been exchanged by the Donbass Republicans. [The] testimonies, which are already very old, show that for 8 years, Ukraine engaged in terrible acts against ethnic Russians in the country, practising torture and without any reaction from the Western media. All these testimonies can be used in future tribunals so that justice is finally done.

After the torture, the difficulty of testifying. Donetsk centre. I am waiting for a couple of prisoners exchanged by the Republicans with the Ukrainians. I am surprised to see six people arrive at our offices. The planned interview is turned upside down, it becomes difficult to stop the flow of words from everyone. All of them are afraid, they have family in the occupied zone of Donbass, they are from different localities, notably from the vicinity of Marioupol, but also from Kharkov. It’s a real stream of horrors that quickly emerges. Exchanged about a month ago, they were debriefed by the republican authorities, but also by the International Red Cross which is present in Donetsk. For an hour and a half, I enter the corridors of hell. The first witness is a young man, he is agitated, gets scared at the sight of computers, panics, walks up and down our offices. It will be impossible to interview him, he is extremely nervous and will repeat several times that his family is at great risk if a video, a photo, or his name appear on the Internet. A second witness, a man in his fifties from the Donetsk region, agrees to speak on camera. The interview is short-lived, his voice quickly fades away, his emotions are too strong for him to give a testimony at this time. A third witness nods his head, he stays away and seems as scared but calmer than the first two. He will remain seated, his shoulders slumped, but he must have a lot to reveal, and like the others he will have to wait.

Reliving months of torture and anguish, years later these men will still find it difficult to talk about the unbearable. A fourth man, aged around 55, launches into his story, which he will not stop for an hour: “I was arrested in December 2014 by four SBU men. They jumped on me, put a bag over my head and I found myself in a harsh interrogation. Like many, I had been an anti-Maidan protester, but I had never taken up arms or demonstrated my opposition other than peacefully. They put a document in front of my eyes, I had to sign. I had been severely beaten before, with a truncheon, a stick, feet, fists. The blows were raining down. Finally I agreed to sign, they threatened to attack my family: “we know where your daughter lives, a little diversions by car and the matter will be settled quickly”. So I signed. I was taken to different prisons, finally I was locked up in a cellar in Kharkov with other prisoners. We had only one plate of kacha and one slice of bread a day. For a toilet we only had a bucket and my comrade here can testify to this, we were only taken out five times in ten months to take a shower».

“At one point I was tried, two months had passed, the paper I had signed said I was ‘a coordinator of the separatists’ artillery’, of course a vile lie. It was a semblance of a court, a judge, a prosecutor, a lawyer with whom I spoke for only five minutes, the case was over in a few minutes. They extended my confinement like this for two months at a time. I was taken to the court place in chains and always with a bag over my head. Once I heard a man speaking English, but I didn’t see his face, I was always with the bag on my head. Once they came to get me, they told me I was free, they gave me my passport, they had stolen my money, my phone, I could never call my family in 11 months. They gave me my Ukrainian passport, I got out of the prison, but as soon as I went through the door, five men fell on me. There I went again, bag on my head, I was dragged into a cellar. I don’t know how long they beat me, you lose track of time, it was dark, there were no windows. They left me on a stool for an infinite time, telling me that men who needed training would come to take care of me later. Only once could I see a soldier’s insignia, my bag had slipped under the blows, it was the insignia of the Dnepr-1 retaliation battalion.

In a dungeon in a cell with the cries of desperate prisoners. The man speaks without stopping, sometimes I feel his fear, his anger or his hatred, always I perceive the tremors of his soul, because he certainly relives the scenes he tells: “Our dungeon was in a basement, there were 13 of us in a room 5 by 8 meters. The only window was blocked, we were incommunicado. We were not allowed to speak with the other prisoners. There were women too. One of them, a young woman, was locked up for a month all alone, in the dark and without talking to anyone. When they took her out for a short walk in the corridor, she was talking to herself, she was going crazy, we were not allowed to talk to her, I know her name was Aniouta, that’s all. The Red Cross came to our prison. I found out from a Swiss woman, Charline Frantz, who came to visit the prison. She told me that the Ukrainians had shown them empty and clean cells, that they had made a quick tour, I then told her where we were, in the cellar with several dozen prisoners, she spoke Russian, not very well but enough for me to understand that she had come to our prison. We couldn’t see anyone, we were constantly humiliated by the guards. Finally, in October they told us that we were going to be released, we were taken to a place near the front. Finally we were taken back to Kharkov, they were furious, ‘it’s the separatists who messed up your release’ they told us, but we knew it was wrong».

The man is panting, his courage, his pain awakens the senses of the other exchanged prisoners. It is then a succession of sadly identical horrors that spread through the conversations. A fifth man is there with his wife, they too end up talking: “They came to arrest my husband when he was picking me up at work, it was in the street, they jumped him, it was over in a few minutes. I never knew where he was, but I had hope he would come back. I lived like that for a year. In the beginning I received phone calls at all hours of the day and night: “You’re going to suffer the same fate as your husband, go to Russia, to Belarus, we don’t want to see you here any more, so one day I left and took refuge with relatives I have in Rostov». The young woman is not yet thirty years old, she continues her story while her husband at times giggles, a disturbing and nervous laugh, a rictus of suffering: “They beat me savagely, the worst thing is that they didn’t ask any questions, it was just blows and more blows. When one was tired, another one took over and then you know the rest, I was thrown into a dungeon with the comrades who are here, 11 of us were released. When they released us, we were emaciated. We all suffer from traumatic injuries due to the torture sessions. I have several damaged vertebrae in my neck, my friend here has five vertebrae in the middle of his back. It’s due to military rangers hitting me in the back, sometimes with the edge of the heel. I believe that there is divine justice, God sees and they will have to refer to him anyway, one day or another.

From the Gestapo to the future courts. The interview fades away, the succession of horrors and tortures was so intense that I find it hard to remember all of it myself. There are too many of them, which fact should be highlighted rather than another? I can easily imagine myself interviewing a French Resistance fighter facing the Gestapo, I understand at this time the infamy of these inhuman acts. All of them end up telling me that they want to talk to me, to continue, I propose to let some time pass and to interview them one by one. In the evening, I don’t go any further, it’s my job to go home with this “baggage”, and I have to deal with it. It is one thing to read about the atrocities committed by the Gestapo, but to realize that the Ukraine of Kiev in 2015 is committing the same crimes is unbearable. But before the journalist, there is the historian. Man is definitely the worst species ever to have breathed on our Earth, but also the best. I know that the executioners will be brought down, history will take care of them. The exchanged prisoners declared before leaving that at this hour hundreds of people are still in the terrible conditions of detention, where they found themselves…

Source: Donbass Insider. IMG: eu.eot.su. AWIP: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/aJ6g