Ukrainian Security Service encouraged militants to torture prisoners, former detainee says

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) cooperated with militants from neo-Nazi armed units in order to force detained Donbass residents to plead guilty, former detainees handed over to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) during the December 29 prisoner swap told the Donetsk News Agency.

"The SBU and radicals are on the same team, as far as I am concerned," said Mariupol resident Viktor Sripnik. "SBU officers are part of the country’s law enforcement agencies so they cannot afford to do all the dirty work. They use radial groups for that purpose," he added.

Skripnik also told the agency about the activities of the Azov battalion, formed mostly from far-right radicals, whose members accomplish the SBU’s most inhuman tasks, particularly torturing prisoners.

"Radicals are the hands of law enforcement agencies. The Security Service acts on behalf of the government and if it takes an inappropriate step, it will tarnish the country’s image on the political stage, while radicals are not intelligence officials," said another released detainee Alexander Stelnikovich.

According to Skripnik and Stelnikovich, they faced torture during a six-month investigation of their case, and then five years of trials followed, which led to nothing because there was no evidence to prove them guilty.

"When the United Nations and the Red Cross took us under their wing and lawyers started working on the case, it became impossible for them [radical nationalists] to kill us and get away with it. We began to fight for the truth, reaching out to various organizations, reporting torture and illegal interrogation methods. We could not prove anything but the case started to collapse because initially, we were expected to plead guilty and receive prison sentences. However, we found the courage to fight," Skripnik pointed out.

The recent prisoner swap took place in Donbass on December 29. A total of 76 people were handed over to Kiev by the self-proclaimed Donbass republics (25 from the Lugansk People’s Republic, LPR, and 51 from the DPR, while Kiev returned 61 detainees to the DPR and another 63 to the LPR.